Paris Olympics vows to carry torch for LGBTQ rights after watershed of Tokyo

Organizers of the Paris Olympics, who gave rainbow colours to their logo Wednesday to mark the international day against homophobia, transphobia and biphobia, aren't limiting themselves to promises of inclusive Games next year. They say they also intend to seize on the Olympic spotlight to push a broader message that LGBTQ rights need to progress outside France, too.

As the French capital set out plans for a Pride House that will celebrate LGBTQ people during the Olympics and Paralympics, organizers pledged that Olympians and campaigners will be given "plenty of opportunities" to speak for LGBTQ rights at next year's event.

"We strongly believe that Paris 2024 has a fantastic opportunity to communicate and demonstrate that this situation has to evolve," said Tony Estanguet, the organizing committee president.

In Paris, athletes will also be "free to speak and to share their messages" when they're not competing, Estanguet pledged.

"There are plenty of opportunities for athletes, for associations, to use the platform of the Games to demonstrate that there [are] some situations [that are] not acceptable, that we have to evolve," he said.

That hasn't always been the case at the Olympics. LGBT activists who waved rainbow flags in Moscow's Red Square and protested in St. Petersburg were arrested during the 2014 Olympics in Russia. What was then a new Russian law banning gay "propaganda" also cast a chill over those Winter Games in Sochi and helped stifle any Olympians who might otherwise have wanted to speak up for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.

This week also saw the closure of a safe space for the LGBTQ community in Beijing, a critical blow for advocacy groups in the city that hosted the 2022 Winter