h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My thoughts, well I'm not interested in the Olympics anyway, so a boycott would go nowhere for me! But yes, we probably should.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23603870

Head on over to the Gay Olympics renamed as the Gay Games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Games

The bidders for the 2022 Gay Olympics has yet to be determined, but lets hope there are bidders from Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uganda and so forth and long division or something.

The International Olympic Committee should be coherent with their nice principles on equality, to start with.

A reason to boycott is the alarming rise on homophobia. Russia goes a step foward by not only tolerating but also fostering with a law, the chase and lynch of homosexuals.

How can people celebrate an event whose main aim is to unite humankind under those principles on equality, sharing, cooperation... when other human fellows are being prosecuted, tortured and killed next door?

Hypocresy is what rules in that Olympic Committee, and love for business, no more, so it´s clearly up to citizens and atletes to movilize in order to defend the rights of a group, but doing so we would be defending all of us.

These are times to get together and fight, in all aspects, or simply to observe how people fall one after another until our turn arrives.

Naturally - of course nobody bothered about China's human rights record when they got the games, but what's a few dead Chinese eh ?

Then there's all those dead Chechens, or the people locked up in the Gulags, or the political opponents of Putin who find themselves in court.

Gay rights is a long way down the list of why we should boycott the Olympics.

IOC? Hypocrisy? Shurley shome mishtake

There were plenty of us opposed to having the Olympics in China, just as there are plenty of us opposed to having the FIFA world cup in Quatar. Just because the Bejing Olympics went ahead don't think that people behind the scenes weren't lobbying against it, strongly, because they were.

Just as they lobby against lots of other things. I'm never sure if boycotts work though.

Boycotts never work but they sure as hell piss people off. Sometimes you just have to accept the best you can do.

"Boycotts never work "

Hmm. The fairly consistent international isolation of South Africa in response to apartheid was, it may be argued, at least partly responsible for shifting that policy.

"The International Olympic Committee should be coherent with their nice principles on equality, to start with"

And what are those principles? As in, where are they written, and precisely what terms? I don't know, and I'd be prepared to bet currency you can fold that you don't either...

"Russia goes a step foward by not only tolerating but also fostering with a law, the chase and lynch of homosexuals"

Ah, now that is something we doctors call "making shit up". It's just false, sorry. NOTHING in Russian law is fostering or condoning the chasing or lynching of anyone, and trying to pretend it does weakens your case and makes you look stupid. You don't need to lie to bolster your argument - what they've done is bad enough.

"How can people celebrate an event whose main aim is to unite humankind under those principles on equality, sharing, cooperation"

Uh... you do realise the Olympics is a COMPETITION, first and foremost, right? As in, its very first principle is that the people gathered together are there to BEAT each other at a sporting event? Because you seem to think it is, at root, some sort of happy-clappy circle-jerk. It's not.

The UK did not boycott the Russian summer games in 1980, when the issue at stake was the invasion of Afghanistan. Anyone remember that? The US *DID* boycott those games, on the basis that invading Afghanistan with overwhelming military force was a reprehensible act for which Russia should be vilified. Sorry, who are the hypocrites again? I've lost count.

I'm (a) not gay and more importantly (b) not Russian, so I've not been following this story that closely, but the reports I've read/heard describe a law not unlike one that we had in the UK until less than a decade ago.

In case anyone's forgotten... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28

I'd say, unless and until there's a solid international consensus and a realistic prospect of actually making a substantive point (as there was with the boycott of South Africa), politics should be kept out of sport.

>>I'm (a) not gay and more importantly (b) not Russian<<

It still matters to you: doesn't what you've posted sound awfully Pastor Niemoller-y? Every right that exists has been won by people who could have turned around and said "This doesn't matter to me." The people oppressed generally can't win things without help.

I am following this story and, to the best of my understanding, the Russian anti-gay "propaganda" law is in a different league to Section 28. Section 28 prevent teachers from teaching being gay was healthy and normal: the Russian law is so vaguely written that you could be jailed for holding hands with a same-sex partner in a place where anyone under the age of 18 *might* be (which is pretty much anywhere). You could be jailed for using an affectionate term (something the Russian language has a lot of) for your same-sex partner within earshot of kids. Saying that you are gay could land you in jail. The law isn't equivalent to Section 28.

Section 28 never made gay "propaganda" a criminal offence and no-one was ever prosecuted under it so it is extremely unclear what the sanction would have been for someone ignoring it. It's also worth noting that, 25 years after it was introduced, there's a lot of gay voters who won't dream of voting Tory because of this specific bit of legislation. A key part of Cameron's modernisation of the Tories has been detoxifying their image and one of the main parts of that is trying (not entirely successfully given more Tories voted against gay marriage than for it) to prove Tories aren't massive homophobes. Section 28 will haunt the Tories for a generation or more.

That said, I don't believe a boycott is the right way to go here. There are some very talented gay athletes due to compete at the Sochi Winter Olympics, some openly gay men and women who stand a real chance of winning medals. We should cheer them on: we want to see them standing on the podiums as the best in the world in their sport/discipline. That will be some gay propaganda for the Duma to get their collective knickers in a twist about.

Imagine for a second if a Russian athlete chooses to come out whilst collecting a medal. Imagine the signal that would send, imagine how powerful message that would send. It could happen: despite what that half-wit Isinbayeva would have you believe, there are Russians out there willing to make these kinds of stands. Just look at that news anchor chap who came out live on TV after refusing to report on the gay "propaganda" law.

Short answer is "no". A lot of good reasons have already been given.

Apartheid-era South Africa was a very unusual case, and a boycott only happened because most of the rest of Africa laid down what amounted to a "them or us" ultimatum. It was a boycott supported by the ANC (among others) and so was being called for by the disadvantaged group. Further, sport held a place of particular cultural significance for white South Africa in a way that's probably not the case for many other countries (perhaps Australia). In any case, I don't think the Olympic boycott was as important as the cricket/rugby boycott, but it's all part of the same thing.

Why Russia (and not China etc and so on) and why gay rights (and not human rights, democracy etc and so on) are both good questions. As is "why the Olympics"? Why express our disapproval via the medium of the Winter Olympics rather than other cultural or economic sanctions, such as a consumer boycott? Would other countries been within their rights to boycott London 2012 over the UK's overseas adventures and role in illegal wars?

"My thoughts, well I'm not interested in the Olympics anyway, so a boycott would go nowhere for me! But yes, we probably should."

I'm starting to think that it's the middle part of the sentence that's the key one - "I'm not interested". I see this in discussions elsewhere - the people in favour of the boycott tend to be the people who don't like sport anyway. They're happy to make the political statement, and for the burden of that to fall onto others (primarily our athletes, but also sports fans). I don't drink, so if I call for a consumer boycott of Russian vodka, it affects me not one jot.

I think the Olympics is awesome - and whatever we may think about how its ideals may or may not have been sullied - I think it's still a force for good and a force for openness and cultural exchange and internationalism. We really, really shouldn't want to exclude any nation unless there are absolutely compelling reasons.

I also think there's something horribly sanctimonious and smug about some of this talk of boycotts. As a country, we're like teenage girls who have only just grown out of boy-bands themselves and discovered better music, and who now pour scorn and ridicule on anyone who still likes the stuff they liked until very recently. It's the same with racism. We love to flaunt our progressiveness and liberalism on the international stage, overlooking (a) how much racism and homophobia there still is in UK society; and (b) how long it took us to get to even where we are today.

>> We love to flaunt our progressiveness and liberalism on the international stage, overlooking (a) how much racism and homophobia there still is in UK society; and (b) how long it took us to get to even where we are today. <<

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GCpIyqOZ53M/Tf88m-D6cKI/AAAAAAAAEgk/TAi0IwbEshg/s1600/Human%2BEvolution.jpg

I was in Saint Petersburg in August with a choral group. Some of the men in the group are openly gay. I had a chance to meet some of them a couple days ago, and they mentioned that they had heard about Russia's new law, and were concerned that they could have innocently gotten themselves arrested just by saying that they were gay. Apparently it 's a crime to say that you're gay in Russia. Now I see this thread, and it turns out that they would only have been in trouble if someone under 18 had heard them.

Life is confusing. People hear part of a piece of news, and think it's the whole piece of news, and they tell their friends, spreading misunderstanding. They don't mean to, but that's the nature of group dynamics.

Not that I like the idea behind Russia's new rules. I don't have to live there. I got safely in and out of the country without encountering any trouble. What I wonder about is this: our group including one gay married couple. This is hypothetical, but how on Earth would they ever explain their relationship to a Russian without breaking the new law? As far as I know, no one ever asked them to do so.

Boycotts [and threatened boycotts] of the Olympics have been going on for a very long time now. It seems hard to find a country [any country] that doesn't have some objectionable laws, or terrible human rights records, or some other reason for not wanting to compete. I can think of at least one occasion [Jesse Owens defeating his German competitors, to Hitler's chagrin] that showed why it might occasionally be good to swallow your objections and just go and compete.

What a world, what a world!

"doesn't what you've posted sound awfully Pastor Niemoller-y?"

And this thread's Godwin award goes to HI, after only 9 posts.

It only sounds that way if you're not reading it properly. Read it again. I'll wait.

...

OK, done that? See, it was explaining why my knowledge of the precise phrasing and ramifications of the law was less than perfect, not saying "Ah, well, nothing to do with me so I'm not going to do anything about it." As it goes, no, I'm not really interested and no, it does not matter to me. But if you *must* (and it seems you must) see this in hysterical "but NAZIS!!!1!!1" terms, give me a ring when "they" look like they might be coming for the able-bodied, white, blond, blue-eyed, cis-gendered Anglo-saxon protestant heterosexual men who would feed puppies into a grinder if they paid me.

"there's a lot of gay voters who won't dream of voting Tory because of this specific bit of legislation"

Question: how many of those people voted Labour in 2001, even though they had, after a LANDSLIDE election win in 1997 and four years in power, not repealed it?

Because I was surprised, when I looked into it before making that last post, that it's less than ten years since Section 28 was repealed. Labour had been in power for six and a half years before they got round to it... one of the most easily-identifiably "nasty" bits of Tory policy, and Labour did bugger all about it for the entirety of their first parliament and a good bit of their second. With that in mind, where does the pink vote actually go? (I'm aware from a former acquaintance that the Lib Dem conference is basically a massive gay knocking shop but surely nobody votes for them any more?)

Whilst being unsure that a sporting ban would have much effect (South Africa aside, as has been pointed out with special circumstances) I do remember seeing a headline in the early seventies 'Australia to mount boycott' and thinking that probably that was the only way to stop our Geoffrey.

Sweet, my first Godwin award. I'd like to thank my family and friends, Hoo for giving me this award and Oscar de la Renta for making this beautiful dress.

Facetiousness aside, Stephen Fry wasn't wrong when he made the comparison between Putin's government and the German government of the early-mid 1930s. Just look at their latest bit of legislation: making offending the Russian Orthodox Church a criminal offence.

http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2013/08/russia-eight-pastafarians-arrested.html

Most gay people I know are Labour voters even when socio-economics says they probably should be Tories. There's some Lib Dems but, as you rightly say, most of them have abandoned them and mostly for Labour.

Say whatever you like about Labour's time in power but they really got the gay rights right. In their first term, when they weren't repealing Section 28, they were equalising the age of consent, ending the ban on gay people serving in the military, introducing a raft on anti-discrimination laws and laying the groundwork for civil partnerships.

I'm not ideologically blinkered: I know in the 80s Labour could be every bit as homophobic as the Tories but they realised their mistake far earlier and did something about it. Gay people that I talk to don't forget that, before his current mania for gay marriage, Cameron voted against civil partnerships. Labour campaigned for gay rights when it was still electorally risky.

You've still not presented anything that shows Section 28 was in any way equivalent to the Russian gay "propaganda" law. The UK and other countries do have a moral high ground here and I don't think there's anything wrong with us using it. I just don't think a boycott is the way to go in this example.

Another option in terms of protesting the Russian law is to attempt to create a martyr (s) to the cause. A well known athlete (s) making use of the medal ceremony to mount a protest such as that made by Tommie Smith and John Carlos less than fifty years ago against American laws and treatment of blacks. They were kicked out of the Olympics and largely ostracised by the US sporting establishment ... but they created a lasting symbol.

Of course it doesn't have to be just at the Winter Olympics to mount a protest ... it could be done outside Chelski or some other symbol of Russian Sport (or non-sport).

That's an important point. The Olympic Games provides an international platform that protest movements can generally only dream of having. Turning up and using that platform, it seems to me, would make a bigger impact than a handful of countries not taking part.

"making offending the Russian Orthodox Church a criminal offence"

The link says the law protects "religious believers"... scary.

And I entirely agree Labour did it right with the rights - my reponse to my point would have been that Section 28 was a low priority compared to the other stuff as it didn't create a criminal offence and with Labour in power could be safely ignored before repeal.

I've not "presented anything" because, in case you missed it, I've already said I'm not really paying that much attention and fundamentally don't care that much. I suspect there is little equivalence if any.

I strongly disagree that we hold a moral high ground, though - see previous point re: invading Afghanistan. We appear to agree a boycott is not the way to go.

>> making offending the Russian Orthodox Church a criminal offence <<


Seems unnecessary, I mean on one hand you have a criminal offence but on the other hand you have everlasting damnation.

I've always thought that religious people who demand punishment in this life for those who insult their god are showing a disturbing lack of faith...