A drag queen who carried the torch of the Olympic flame in Paris’s opening ceremony told critics, “We ain’t going nowhere” after the theatrics received backlash for appearing to mock Christianity.
French drag performer Karl Sanchez, known by his stage name Nicky Doll, has taken to social media to make fun of “the ones that had their feathers ruffled seeing queerness on their screen” after Christians responded poorly to the ceremony’s portrayal of the iconic painting, the Last Supper:
This is crazy. Opening your event by replacing Jesus and the disciples at the The Last Supper with men in drag. There are 2.4 billion Christians on earth and apparently the Olympics wanted to declare loudly to all of them, right out of the gate
NOT WELCOME pic.twitter.com/T88AmXbqXL— Clint Russell (@LibertyLockPod) July 26, 2024
“The opening ceremony did ruffle some feathers… and I LOVE it,” Doll wrote in a Monday morning Instagram Story that Fox News viewed. “You know why? Because the Olympics are the biggest stage in the world and us queer people have always been the audience of other people’s life and achievement and it is time that we are welcome in the space.”
In an earlier post from Sunday, he said it was his “absolute honor to perform in front of billions of people around the world, and celebrate our olympians.”
“And remember, to the ones that had their feathers ruffled seeing queerness on their screen: WE AIN’T GOING NOWHERE,” he added in capital letters:
Doll also reposted an image to his story claiming that the Olympic opening ceremony was a depiction of the feast of the Greek god Dionysius, not the Last Supper. While the Paris Olympics’ organizing committee has repeated this claim, the performer who appeared to portray Jesus Christ in the recreation of Leonardo DaVinci’s famous painting confirmed it was related to Christianity by boasting of being in “the new gay testament” in a now-deleted Instagram post that the Catholic Herald viewed.
Paris 2024 spokesperson Anne Descamps responded to the backlash on Sunday, telling Reuters reporters at a press conference, “Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group. [The opening ceremony] tried to celebrate community tolerance.”
“We believe this ambition was achieved. If people have taken any offense, we are really sorry,” she added.