Justice

The Reason This Olympic Athlete Is Furious About Grindr Dates

August 11th 2016

An Olympic skier is furious about some Grindr dates at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Nico Hines, a married heterosexual writer from The Daily Beast, made a profile on the gay dating app, met up with athletes in the Olympic Village and then wrote about it. Gus Kenworthy is an openly gay Olympian who won silver for the U.S. in freestyle skiing at the Sochi Olympics in 2014. He's now in Brazil to watch the summer games, and he tweeted his anger at Hines' deceptive reporting.

Gus Kenworthy tweets about Nico Hines. Twitter/@guskenworthy - twitter.com

In his story, which was published Wednesday, Hines reported that he used several dating apps, including Grindr, to see if he could get into the Olympic Village sex parties. However a section of the original article focused specifically on Hines meeting men on the gay dating app.

Although the original article did not include names, it contained information that could be used to identify gay athletes.

After strong backlash, the article was changed to remove certain details, although it was up for hours, and nothing can truly be deleted from the internet. An editor's note on the new version of the article lacked an apology but said that Hines didn't lie to anyone and that he admitted his identity soon as each person showed up to meet him.

Beyond using members of the LGBT community as props for his story, Hines seems to have missed the dangerous point, which Kenworthy and his followers pointed out.

Outing a gay person could have serious and often violent consequences in many countries.

There are 10 countries where being an LGBT person is a crime and can be punished by death, according to The Washington Post.

  • Yemen
  • Iran
  • Mauritania
  • Nigeria
  • Qatar
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Afghanistan
  • Somalia
  • Sudan
  • United Arab Emirates

The Washington Post's map of homosexuality laws. The Washington Post - washingtonpost.com

There are 65 other countries across the world where homosexuality is illegal.

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