Adam Rippon joins John Quiñones on the latest episode of ABC’s What Would You Do? about a topic that has plagued many of us in the LGBTQ community.
The decorated Olympian watches from afar as a scenario is set up featuring a high school student and his coach.
After building up the courage, the young man finally tells his coach he’s gay and says he wants to come out to his teammates, too. The coach advises the student not to come out, saying it would ruin his chances of becoming a professional baseball player.
Rippon reflects on his own experiences as the first openly gay Winter Olympian to represent Team USA and to win a medal for the United States. The episode airs after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision protecting LGBTQ workers from discrimination in the workplace.
2020 has seen a major uptick when it comes to the amount of sports stars who have come out. UK hockey player Zach Sullivan, Olympic Canadian swimmer Markus Thormeyer and many others have proudly spoken their truth publicly over the past couple of months.
Rippon is far from the only member of the LGBTQ community to appear on this groundbreaking program. Nyle DiMarco was in the background himself while watching a waiter be rude and dismissive to a deaf man at a restaurant. The former America’s Next Top Model winner, who is deaf himself, has been a champion for the hearing-impaired community ever since he rose to fame on the CW series.
RuPaul’s Drag Race season 12 contestant Jackie Cox appeared on WWYD before her time on the Emmy-winning program began. She played a drag queen whose conservative parents didn’t approve of what she was wearing while they were out to eat.
The newest WWYD airs this Tuesday, July 14, at 10pm EST on ABC.