Gay Olympic Pairs Figure Skating. IOC Put Up Or Shut Up

The practice of sport is a human right. Each individual must have the possibility or practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity, and fair play. 

My wife and I were watching the always gorgeous pairs figure skating and ice dancing competitions of the Sochi Olympics. One can't help but admire the grace and athleticism of these athletes. Then she asked a very funny question, "Do you think some day there could be a gay couple competing in the Olympics in figure skating?" Hmm, I don't see why not.

The Russians received a lot of grief prior to the start of the Sochi Olympics for discouraging gay people from attending and demonstrating at the massive sports venue. But according to the International Olympics charter above, no discrimination of any kind should be allowed in competition. So the possibility of a gay couple in skating doesn't seem out of the question.

Nowadays, the athletic skills required to compete successfully at the top levels of pairs figure skating practically require two men to compete. With the amount of spins and tossing of partners necessary for a gold medal caliber routine, two men may be more successful than a male/female pair. Imagine a two man pair on the ice, each able to do quadruple loops and enormous leaps. They would beat any male/female pair on technical merits alone.

Now I don't know if the rules of international figure skating specifically prohibits same sex couples from competing in pairs figure skating, but if they do, the IOC should prohibit the sport until it has been removed. Unless of course there is more to the figure skating rules than just human rights. The cynic in me can't help but think that, as always, big money is involved.

While many of the western countries may be accepting of same sex pairings in figure skating, I suspect that most of the rest of the world will not, particularly the Asian and developing countries. If the population in these countries decide they don't want to watch figure skating because of same sex pairings, that could lead to huge financial losses.

So International Olympic Committee and International Skating Union, it's time to put up or shut up. If they truly cared about equal rights as a human right, they would stop bloviating about Russia's lack of gay rights. The idea of same sex pairs figure skating makes technical and artistic sense. But I'm sure they will never allow that to happen because there are billions of dollars at stake here. And in the end money talks while human rights walk.

NBC's Eurocentric Coverage Of The Opening Ceremony Makes Me Mad.

I've been sitting in front of the TV for nearly three hours. It is now almost midnight. I'm eagerly awaiting the entrance of the Taiwanese (Chinese Taipei) team into Olympic Stadium. In the meantime I've had to suffer through the seemingly endless list of nations I've never heard of march past my screen. Comoros?

As we wind down the S's, I can see on the convenient little ticker at the bottom of the screen that Taiwan is coming up. I just need to get past Syria and we're there. After the commentators make some useless observations about the civil war in that country, the Taiwanese team starts entering the left side of my TV. Then..we cut to a commercial. What the hell?

Taiwan doesn't have a small team. They are entering 44 athletes at the Olympics. Yet they are not given the live face time awarded much smaller countries like Liechtenstein and Bosnia/Herzegovina. Now that I think about it, I think virtually every Western European country was shown live while most of the countries given snippets of video were non-Western. Some Eastern countries are too big for NBC to ignore. Of course they had to show China and India. With a combined population of over 2 billion people they don't want to piss off a third of the world's population.

Though Taiwan is small country, it is one of the United States' largest trading partners. The little island is so important to us that we actually have a law that mandates our protection of Taiwan from its larger neighbor, even by war if necessary. Yet NBC made us sit through images of the beautiful people from tiny countries like Monaco and Luxembourg while ignoring Taiwan, a small country with a real chance of winning medals in multiple sports, okay badminton and table tennis.

So NBC, since you have a monopoly on airing the Olympics in the U.S., it is your duty to show all the diversity of countries that participate at this illustrious event. Even though most of your directors and cameramen are Caucasian, please give smaller non-Western countries some more screen time. Who knows? You might actually attract more viewers to your expensive programming.