A reader writes:
I’m growing quite tired of the calls for gay athletes to lead some sort of civil disobedience in Russia during the Sochi Olympics. Most of these are coming out of members of the press with stars in their eyes, I get that. But I am surprised that you are not more circumspect.
Vladimir Putin is not Bull Connor. The worst gay rights activists in Russia would face is not being sprayed with firehoses and thrown in the county jail for a few days. The Russian prison system has scarcely changed since the days of the old Soviet Gulag. Having spent time in Lithuania, I had the opportunity to talk with people whose relatives were shipped off to Siberia and never heard from again. Asking other people to go over and risk a similar fate while enjoying complete freedom of speech – and a vastly better climate towards gay rights – here in our cushy Western democracy is the very height of irresponsibility. Unless you yourself are willing to board a plane wearing a rainbow t-shirt and face the possibility of arrest and detention without trial in a country where the concept of habeas corpus is a dicey proposition at best, I would respectfully request that you back off.
For that matter, Putin’s deal right now is pretty transparent. He’s trying to win favor at home by flipping the bird to the rest of the world, particularly the US and Western Europe. Can’t you see how sending gay protesters there and daring him to arrest them would play right into his hands? He could go to his citizens and the rabidly conservative Orthodox Church and say, “See! The decadent West has sent these gays to destabilize our country!” Why give him more ammunition?
Finally, internal civil disobedience is one thing; I fully support those Russian activists who are risking arrest even now. But disobedience from outside is phenomenally dangerous. How would the US have reacted if the civil rights leaders of the sixties had enlisted help from the Soviet Union? I’m going to go out on a limb and say probably not well. Would it have been a good idea for the world to have protested the Nuremburg Laws by telling Jews to travel to Germany in 1938 and give Hitler all the bad press he could stomach? Come on.
My reader makes some sharp points, especially about the glibness of that post. I regret that tone in retrospect. I didn’t mean to urge others to go to Siberia while I sit in comfort in the West. But, equally, I cannot imagine the Russian authorities rounding up foreign Olympic athletes if they find a way to express opposition to the demonization of gay people now enshrined in Russian law. Frank Bruni’s suggestion is perhaps the best way to do this – have athletes from countries that respect human rights for gay people wear some small tokens or signs of solidarity:
As the television cameras zoom in on Team U.S.A., one of its members quietly pulls out a rainbow flag, no bigger than a handkerchief, and holds it up. Not ostentatiously high, but just high enough that it can’t be mistaken.
The reason this may be the best form of civil disobedience is that it would have the maximum television exposure and therefore the maximum visibility. Chuck Schumer endorsed it today. It would also be against Olympic rules. But if the issue became one of athletes versus the IOC as much as athletes versus Putin, so much the better. The IOC needs a kick in the ass for its blithe acquiescence to authoritarianism.
As for non-athletes exercizing civil disobedience, I should not have urged others to do something I’m not doing myself. But I can admire, celebrate and cover such civil disobedience – and the prospect of having to jail many foreigners under the anti-gay law in a moment of huge visibility might well even cause Putin to think twice before cracking down. It’s not as if this is the first time this happened. The courageous Peter Tatchell has faced down Putin before and lived to tell the tale. And I doubt Peter is going to stay away from Sochi when the moment comes.
(Photo: a dummy from an August 10 London protest against Putin. By Andrew Cowie/Getty.)
The Dish 