Russia’s mistake, world’s opportunity
Celebrities, activists call for a boycott of Sochi Games
There’s something fundamentally horrifying about Russia’s crackdown against homosexuality.
This isn’t an Islamic country arrogantly stipulating “we don’t have that problem here,” as if homosexuals were persistent rodents. This isn’t a developing African nation riddled with AIDS and deadly prejudice against gays. This is a powerful modern G8 nation in the forefront of world affairs. Some of its citizens are incredibly wealthy and sophisticated. And yet almost 80 per cent of Russians apparently approve of the state-sponsored repression of homosexuality.
It doesn’t take Freud to realize this is a country wracked by doubts about its own self-worth, led by a leader who is a caricature of a macho man. Vladimir Putin, unsmiling, muscle bound, comes across as the kind of belligerent thug who carries brass knuckles in his pocket and would be the first to punch out queers in a bar who dared to be simply enjoying themselves.
Almost 80 per cent of Russians apparently approve of the state-sponsored repression of homosexuality
No wonder, as the Sochi Winter Games approach, much of the democratic world is in a moral tizzy. U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird have both registered their disapproval of this new push to repress homosexuality under the smokescreen of a law making it a crime to “propagandize non-traditional sexual relations to minors.”
Baird’s actions had the welcome effect of revealing Gwen Landolt, leader of the anti-feminist group REAL Women to be a bigot. In her purse-lipped disapproval of his statement and less than subtle attempt to label Baird, whose private life is his own business, Landolt’s reputation has finally and justifiably self-destructed.
Celebrities and activists are now calling for a boycott of everything from vodka to the Games themselves, and there’s even a sly “we’ll show them” call to make Sochi “the gayest Olympics ever.” Forget pink boas or other campy gestures. Every athlete should wear a rainbow flag, displayed as prominently as a country flag. So why should the world, many of whose democracies are moving quickly toward enshrining LGBT rights, care if Russia lags behind? British actor and writer Stephen Fry eloquently nailed it in a letter to Prime Minister David Cameron and Olympic officials demanding the Games be moved.
After pointing out that Russia’s beloved Tchaikovsky was gay, Fry argued that Putin should not be allowed to get away with “making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews.”
Fry, both gay and Jewish, wrote: “My mother lost over a dozen of her family to Hitler’s anti-Semitism. Every time in Russia (and it is constantly) a gay teenager is forced into suicide, a lesbian “correctively” raped, gay men and women beaten to death by neo-Nazi thugs while the Russian police stand idly by, the world is diminished and I for one, weep anew at seeing history repeat itself.”
Ten years ago, such immediate visceral pushback on any country’s anti-gay policy wouldn’t have happened. But just as women’s rights — to be free from patriarchal repression, to make one’s own choice about marriage, to have an education and equal opportunity — have become a global human rights issue, turning the young women struggling in these anti-female regimes into “all our daughters now” as activist and author Sally Armstrong memorably put it, gay rights are evolving swiftly in that direction, too.
Ten years ago, such immediate visceral pushback on any country’s anti-gay policy wouldn’t have happened
Passionate and hard-headed activists sometimes scoff at the notion that to know one homosexual is to change one’s mind about all homosexuals. They squirm, as black civil rights leaders did decades ago, at squishy “some of my best friends are black” affirmations. But when backed by social action, they work: the swift recent progress in the United States toward marriage equality has everything to do with families where fear of homosexuality is bred in the bone realizing a loved one is gay and simply wanting them to have what other Americans have. Not only equality but “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
In Russia, alas, there is no such mercy, no such progress. I visited that country eons ago and I would never go back, never give it a dime of my tourist money. Pussy Rioters and gay youths risk violence and prison, all sanctioned by an ugly state mentality, led by Mr. Macho, who has cosied up to the Russian Orthodox Church as a political expediency. In another time, of course, religious leaders were thrown in jail to achieve a government objective.
I’m with Stephen Fry. Move the bloody Games. It doesn’t matter that Russia says tourists and athletes will be exempt from the law. It matters, as it did with Hitler, who stood and received the Nazi salute at the 1936 Olympic games as his plans were well underway to murder millions of Jews, homosexuals, Roma, Slavs and others, that a country be told the world won’t allow it to stigmatize, imprison and kill its own citizens simply because of who they are.
But that won’t happen, will it? Start shipping the rainbow flags. That’s the least the world can do. Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson