Are you an Olympic protestor? Every time the Olympics roll around everyone always hushes me and my protests with some kind of misguided interpretation of the Olympics, usually along the lines of, “But they’re a sacred tradition! They’re like the Greek gods and stuff.”

Oh, really, the Greek gods, you say? Then you’ll have no trouble with me guffawing in your face when you start to push your Christian ideals on me as well (as most of these people do) and calling you a hypocrite when you condemn me to hell for being a pagan.

Aside from this obvious state of disjointed, weird Olympic worship, what really bothers me about the sports—aside from the fact that yes, they are sports, and not actual heroic feats performed by actual heroes and yet they are still worshipped as such, and to a gross extent that actual heroes have never born witness to—is the vast amounts of dollars, time, and resources that go hand-in-hand with such big events (I guess that’s also in relation to my first point—they’re sports).

All of these resources—from energy to cups and everything in between!—are being used for some glorified sacred “sports,” even as we push for a greener policy in every political realm—for a real plan to combat climate change. Do we care so little for our children’s futures that we’d rather blow all of the energy we’ve already got on watching prepubescent girls who starve themselves and miss out on their own childhoods walk a balance beam? (Yes, another issue I have with Olympic sports!)

Will I protest the seal clubbing, the Tibetan people’s plight—and, continually, the wars in the U.S.? Most definitely. These are good reasons to not give dollars to countries and their regimes, after all, and I’m down with people not throwing more money at them for these atrocities occurring. In fact, if it weren’t for my primary reasons, I would probably still not follow the Olympics because of these issues. No country is perfect—and the single issue of seal clubbing might not be big enough to garner a protest, perhaps—but flooding monies into countries that are constantly keeping other countries poor and at their mercy—as well as killing thousands of people—is simply not justifiable.

So as much of a cutie I think Johnny Weir is, I won’t be partaking in any Olympic activities and neither will my family. Maybe if it were all run on solar power, with completely recycled everything, and everyone involved swapped salaries with firefighters, teachers, and nurses--or even if they'd revert back to the old days of simple sports, no corporate endorsements, and a small budget--I’d give it a shot.