Arthur Nory Mariano, a 28-year-old Brazilian gymnast and Olympic medalist, came out in a recent Instagram post.
The post featured a video of Mariano spending quality time with with his boyfriend, João Otávio Tasso. In the video, Tasso cuddles with the couple’s dogs, the couple enjoys time on the beach, they hug in public and they dance together for the video camera.
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In the video’s caption, Mariano wrote, “Happy Birthday to the person who freaks out with me 😅 The phrase ‘in health or illness, in victory or in defeat, in joy or sadness’ never quite fit. And there we are every day walking together. Thank you for always being by my side. I will always be yours.”
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“Congratulations João, many years of life and continue to be that amazing person 👀, even if Scorpio (always good to blame the sign). We’re together,” the message concluded.
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Neither the video nor the caption made any additional mention about Mariano’s sexual orientation. However, Tasso has appeared in many of Mariano’s Instagram photos over the last year.
In 2015, the Brazilian national gymnastics team suspended Mariano for a month after he and two teammates made racist comments about a dark-skinned gymnast in a Snapchat social media video. He apologized for his comments and said he had no negative feelings towards the gymnast.
If Mariano makes it into a future Olympics, he will likely be only one of a handful of out male athletes. At the 2021 Tokyo Summer Games, LGBTQ women outnumbered queer men by about 9-to-1, the queer sports website Outsports reported.
Part of the reason for the disparity has to do with the fact that “there are simply more LGBTQ women in elite sports than men,” the site wrote. Also, women’s teams and their management have been much more accepting of queer women than men’s teams and managers have been.
However, every time a male athlete like Mariano comes out, it helps lay the groundwork for others to do the same.
