Gay At The Games: Opening Weekend At The 2012 Summer Olympics

This weekend the Olympic Games in London got off to a quirky—okay, downright bizarre—start with an opening ceremony that saw Queen Elizabeth playing a Bond girl and Mary Poppins doing battle with Lord Voldemort.

Our favorite part of the intro, of course, was the brief lesbian kiss between actresses from an episode of the 1990s soap opera Brookside. Not that we haven’t seen girls kiss before, but it made us all warm and fuzzy knowing that smooch was being televised in across the globe, into the homes of people living under oppressive and homophobic regimes.

We wish we had caught Chris Basiurski carrying the Olympic Torch on Thursday and kissing his boyfriend, but someone will probably upload it into YouTube soon enough.

While we were fairly fixed on men’s swimming and gymnastics (Danell Leyva is the new black.) we did try to see how some of the openly gay competitors were doing in London. Here’s the highlights:

* With out guard Seimone Augustus scoring two shots, the U.S. women’s basketball team defeated Croatia 81-56 on Saturday.

*  The U.S. women’s soccer team took Colombia 3-0 on Saturday in Glasgow, with lesbian Megan Rapinoe (right) dominating the field and scoring the winning goal. The three out players on Sweden’s women’s soccer team shared in their team’s tie against Japan.

* With three out lesbian team members, the Netherlands’ field-hockey squad beat Belgium 3-0.

* German cyclist Ina Yoko Teutenberg finished 4th in the road-cycling competition, with her fellow gay teammate Judith Arndt coming in 9th.

* South African archer Karen Anne Hultzer was ranked 46 out of 64 by the end of Saturday.

* Lesbian Mayssa Pessoa helped the Brazilian women’s handball team knock out a 24-23 victory against Croatia.

 

Source: The New Civil Rights Movement, OutSports, GayStarNews

 

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