The Skater

Vice President Michael Pence has been in a storm of controversy after Olympic star skater and openly gay Adam Rippon dissed him and his anti-LGBT stance last month in a media interview. Pence is leading the United States delegation to Korea for the Winter Olympics opening tomorrow.

When asked about what he felt about Pence heading the delegation, Rippon said in the interview: "You mean Mike Pence, the same Mike Pence that funded gay conversion therapy?... I would absolutely not go out of my way to meet somebody who I felt has gone out of their way to not only show that they aren’t a friend of a gay person but that they think that they’re sick. I wouldn’t go out of my way to meet somebody like that.... I don’t think the current administration represents the values that I was taught growing up. Mike Pence doesn’t stand for anything that I really believe in."

Pence reportedly was "upset" by the comments and sought out a private meeting with Rippon in Korea (details here). Rippon quickly said no to this proposal.

The Vice President's office has tried to spin that Pence never specifically funded gay conversion "therapy" to put Rippon on the defensive. But in his 2000 campaign for Congress, Pence said he had funded "institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior" (details here), which certainly sounds like conversion "therapy."

Whether or not Pence favors this widely condemned practice, which has been outlawed in some states, his positions have been stridently anti-LGBT and he's part of an administration that both wants to legalize anti-LGBT discrimination and reduce LGBT Americans to a second class status.

Rippon is right in publicly shaming and embarrassing Pence, and more public figures need to do the same.