Can figure skating's first LGBTQ team change ice dance's reliance on romance?

ESPN ^ | 1-24-2019 | Nick McCarvel

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

#14. Pretty soon we are going to run out of letters in the alphabet used to describe various groupings of people. What then, Emojies, hastags, etc?

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

#35. Oh no! Coming to an ice rink near you, “Trannies on Ice”.

What next, “Tranny Wrestling” with tag-team matches of Maxine “The Masher” Waters and Liz “Indian Princess” Warren versus Nancy “The Hammer” Pelosi and “Cowgirl” Sheila Jackson Lee?

How about “Believe it or not wrestling”? Could feature Adam “The Alien” Schiff and Corey “The Conman” Booker versus Raoul “Taco Bell” Grivaljas and Andrew “The Godfather” Cuomo?

Mixed wrestling matches would include Kamala “The Jamaican Curry” Harris and Alexandra “Google Eyes” Ocasio-Cortex versus Barbara “The Commissar” Lee and Rosa “The MacBeth Witch” De Lauro?

Next would be a mixed men’s match featuring Charles “Chucky” Schumer and Eric “The Mouth” Swalwell versus Beto “Beetlejuice” O’Rourke and Hank “Island Tipper” Johnson.

I could go on for years with the freak show that is the Democrat Party contingent in Congress but I won’t. Doesn’t mean that you can’t.

[Gene Eric]

The Left turned homosexuality into political poison.

The Left identifies social vulnerabilities, and then cranks the sensitivities beyond tolerance.

Love thy neighbor, and forgive those that trespass against you... but the Left must be destroyed.

[mom.mom]

First?

[Jeff Chandler]

Queer ice skaters? Whoulda thunkit!

[Jeff Chandler]

the first ice dance team with two LGBTQ competitors

What are they, naive?

[LRoggy]

One of the great covered up stories years ago was that Eric Lindros got in Elvis’ face at a nightclub and disparaged figure skating. It ended up with Elvis kicking the crap out of Lindros.

[4Liberty]

[CincyRichieRich]

Life is better without cable or any pay tv...

[NorthMountain]

Good lookin’ kids ... too bad they’re mentally and spiritually depraved. May God grant them the grace of repentance and conversion.

[sphinx]

ESPN again take the gold in the stupidity Olympics. I don't like subjective judging in sports to begin with, which is just one more reason to ignore skating. That said, competitive dance is theatrical in nature. That's true whether it's on ice or on a ballroom floor or on TV in, for example, Dancing With the Stars. A theatrical performance generally requires some chemistry, real or feigned, between the performers. How to tiptoe the sexuality line is a tough call.

There are brother and sister teams. There are teams in which both partners are involved with, sometimes married to, other people. There are married couple teams, teams where the skaters are a couple off-ice, and teams where the partners used to be involved, have broken up, but still skate or dance together. There are certainly plenty of teams where the woman is straight and her partner is gay, but they're professional and they dance prettily together anyhow. And I would expect that there are plenty of teams in which the skaters/dancers find each other attractive but work hard not to cross that line, because they want to keep their performances on a strictly professional level. Judges should respect that line. So should commentators.

In this case, both skaters are gay. Neither is trans; there is no gender bending going on here, which would be a serious challenge to the integrity of the sport, such as it is. Gay man, gay woman, no implied sexual chemistry; they're not the first pair to make it clear that they want to be judged as athletes, not as romantic leads. ESPN is going orgasmic because it wants to celebrate homosexuality, not skating.

[9YearLurker]

And here we thought that’s what they all were, to some degree.

[USCG SimTech]

Barf bags issued free with every ticket

[sitetest]

Lol!

[GOPJ]

The U.S. Men’s Heterosexual Figure Skating Championship - SNL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1ZYTQToX9A

ROTFLMAO

[SaveFerris]

That’s just totally ga.....

[ClearBlueSky]

I watch a lot of figure skating. IMO the females generally stink, mostly posing and arm-waving. The men are NOT the caliber you saw when Hamilton, Boitano,Wylie,Petrenko etc skated, few stinkers in that generation. The pairs-then-Martini and Underhill were HOT on ice, yet they were not a couple(each married to others). There were a couple of brother sister teams but knowing they were somehow detracted from performances that were supposed to be romantic. None were Gordeeva and Grinkov romantic.
The sport has generally deteriorated. You WILL see same- sex teams eventually.Flamingly gay, probably in ice dance first. Making a point of sexuality is a way of saying-'see, they LOOK like a normal team but they're GAY and they're good! It's irrelevant, but necessary to ease OPEN homosexuality to the sport.
Your'e good or you are not, what you do in bed doesn't matter any more than trying for sympathy because your grandma died or you got divorced. Making a point of gayness is to establish a protective edge- scoring them low(even if the stunk) has to be homophobic! Next will be physically handicapped skaters,blind etc.Awww, participation medals for everyone!!
Damn, I miss Scott Hamilton!!!

[CaptainK]

To this day my favorite skater I’d Paul Wylie. He should have been awarded the Gold. Skating politics prevented that.

[ClearBlueSky]

Agree 100%.I could never figure why he was overlooked. There were a few destined to stay second tier- Wylie, Sabovchek, Candeloro; but none as consistently good as Wylie.Lithe, fast and artistic, he was cheated of national and Olympic gold. I’m going to watch my old tapes and check out Youtube for REAL skating!

[VanShuyten]

It doesn’t really count.
I’m waiting for the first trans duo made up of two men.