With the 2014 Winter Games set to start in less than a week in a repressive dictatorship in all but name known as Russia, Slate provides a good look at the brutality of life for gays in Vladimir Putin's Russia. A horror to which the International Olympic Committee has closed its eyes just as it did to the Nazi's treatment of Jews in the 1930's. Sadly, companies like Coca-Cola have joined in this reprehensible behavior as previously noted on this blog. Bad things happen when good people sit on their hands and fail to act. Here are highlights from the Slate piece that give a view of the bad things now happening in Russia:
Ever since virulently homophobic Russian President Vladimir Putin pushed through a law effectively outlawing openly gay people, the country’s LGBTQ community has, predictably, been plagued by violence. Now a study published in Harvard University’s Health and Human Rights journal confirms what myriad horrific anecdotes suggest: Gay people in Russia are being beaten, raped, and murdered at record rates—and the government is doing little to stop it.
The issue of violence against gays in Russia is, of course, nothing new. Before the passage of the new federal measure, several regional governments passed identical laws, stripping gay citizens of legal rights and human dignity. More than one-half of Russian gays reported psychological abuse, while 16 percent experienced physical assault, and 7 percent were raped. Yet 77 percent also reported complete distrust of the police, leaving most anti-gay crimes unreported.
By putting the government’s stamp of approval on rampant Russian homophobia, Putin effectively declared open season on gay people. As the Harvard study notes, violence against gays in Russia isn’t considered violence at all; rather, it’s thought of as a way for young males to prove their own heterosexuality—while simultaneously cleansing society of an aberrant, pedophilic community. That’s the motivation behind groups like Occupy Pedophilia, which lure in gay teens through social media in order to publicly humiliate them by beating them with sex toys or forcing them to drink urine.
In fact, much anti-gay violence comes from law enforcement officers themselves, who have brutally suppressed any public showing of gay tolerance. (That’s the law, after all.)
A strong and confident leader could have helped the country move beyond its antediluvian conceptions of sexuality and gender. Instead, the paranoid Putin has used gays as a common enemy and a scapegoat. He might have scored political points with this stunt, both in his own country and in the West. But the toll of his intolerance is currently being paid in human lives.
The boyfriend and I will not be tuning in to watch the Olympics. Nor will we be by products of its sponsors like Coke. In fact, the boyfriend's salon is switching the soft drinks it offers to clients to avoid Coke products.
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