Yesterday the advocacy group All Out delivered a 320,000-signature petition to the International Olympic Committee urging it to condemn Russia’s crackdown on gay people. Stephen Fry released a letter calling for a boycott of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, saying that Putin “is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews” and comparing the event to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin:
Putin is eerily repeating this insane crime, only this time against LGBT Russians. Beatings, murders and humiliations are ignored by the police. Any defence or sane discussion of homosexuality is against the law. Any statement, for example, that Tchaikovsky was gay and that his art and life reflects this sexuality and are an inspiration to other gay artists would be punishable by imprisonment. It is simply not enough to say that gay Olympians may or may not be safe in their village. The IOC absolutely must take a firm stance on behalf of the shared humanity it is supposed to represent against the barbaric, fascist law that Putin has pushed through the Duma.
LZ Granderson thinks the comparison to the Berlin Games is apt:
In talking about the 1936 Olympics, I do not equate what is happening in Russia to what happened to Jewish people during World War II. I just want to remind you that the Holocaust did not happen overnight. It was subtle. Surgical. In silence. These new anti-gay laws are disturbingly similar to the anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws Hitler passed before the 1936 Olympics. And with the Pew Institute finding 84 percent of Russians believe society should reject gay people, perhaps some saying they object to gays for fear of arrest, the world should question how far Russia intends to go.
Meanwhile, runner Nick Symmonds became the first US. Olympian to publicly criticize Russia’s “gay propaganda” law this week. However, in stark contrast to Fry, Symmonds said he wouldn’t raise the issue in Russia:
I will say now what I said before the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, when people asked me how I felt competing in a foreign country with questionable human rights standards: The playing field is not a place for politics.
In a world rife with never-ending political battles, let the playing field be where we set aside our differences and compete for national pride and the love of sport. If I am placed in a race with a Russian athlete, I will shake his hand, thank him for his country’s generous hospitality, and then, after kicking his ass in the race, silently dedicate the win to my gay and lesbian friends back home. Upon my return, I will then continue to fight for their rights in my beloved democratic union.
Meanwhile, ESPN’s Jim Caple thinks a boycott would be counterproductive:
Skipping these upcoming Olympics would only alienate and anger the very people in Russia the boycott supporters are trying to influence. It’s somewhat like Dan Savage’s misguided call to boycott Stolichnaya vodka, which is produced in Latvia, not Russia. The people such a boycott will hurt are not the Russians with anti-gay views but the innocent workers in what was once an oppressed Soviet republic. … If Russian President Vladimir Putin opposes gay rights, let LGBT athletes from every nation go and beat his athletes in competition.
Along similar lines, last week Frida Ghitis urged athletes to show up and “turn the Winter Games into the gayest games in history”:
Let the Russian police, if they want, arrest every athlete, every coach from Europe, North American, Australia and other forward-looking countries – that includes you, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. The teams should march during the opening ceremonies brandishing rainbow flags, holding hands, proclaiming that every one of them supports equal rights for gay and lesbians — in Russia and everywhere else. Make it an “I am Spartacus” moment for the world. Let Putin arrest them all.
(Photo: Unknown anti-gay activist hits Russia’s gay and LGBT rights activist Nikolai Alexeyev during an unauthorized gay rights activists rally in central Moscow on May 25, 2013. By Andrey Svitailo/AFP/Getty Images)
The Dish 