Obama's Olympic Delegation Features 2 Gay Athletes. Your Move, Putin.

Conundrum: 2014 Winter Olympics host country Russia just enacted an ass-backward anti-gay law that isn’t popular in countries led by less awful people. How’s a self-respecting world leader to give the government the finger while still supporting their home country’s athletes? By sending an Olympic delegation chock full’o’gays and gay friendly folk, that’s how.

Yesterday, President Obama announced that neither he nor any current sitting members of his cabinet would be attending the Olympics, held in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi (basically Durmstrang from the Harry Potter books, if my wildly speculative imagination serves me right. AND IT DOES.). But the void left by Obama/Biden et al will be filled by a delegation that includes both tennis legend (and openly gay back when no one knew that they had gay friends) Billie Jean King and hockey great (and openly gay) Caitlin Cahow.

According to CNN, this marks the first time in more than 10 years that the US hasn’t sent a President, ex-President, First Lady, or Vice President to the opening or closing ceremonies of an Olympic Games. CNN also speculates that this may be a response to hurt feelings about that whole Edward Snowden-leaking-millions-of-classified-documents thing. But Obama’s remarks about LGBT rights, meetings with Russian social activist groups, and with the presence of Cahow and King on the Presidential delegation send a pretty clear message that the US isn’t cool with Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law.