Olympic Committee Could Punish Athletes For Speaking Out Against Russian Anti-Gay Law

[Behind the Aegis]

With just six months to go before the 2014 Winter Olympics open in Sochi, Russia, the International Olympic Committee is facing a dilemma in its hand-picked host country: Russia passed an anti-gay law earlier this year that outlaws homosexual propaganda and punishes any instance of it with fines, jail time, and possible deportation. That’s bad news for an organization that prides itself on tolerance, especially considering there will be LGBT athletes at the Games. So the IOC went and got “assurances” from the Russian government that the law wouldn’t apply to Olympians or fans, though other Russian officials have said those assurances are meaningless and that the law will be endorsed.

Facing pressure from LGBT activists and even President Obama, the IOC has announced that it intends to take action. Against any athlete who speaks out against the law during the Games.

Activists want athletes to wear rainbow flag pins or show LGBT pride and solidarity in other ways. American figure skater Johnny Weir has said he’s unafraid of getting arrested, and openly gay speed skater Blake Skjellerup from New Zealand, has pledged to wear a pin at the Games. But if they do, the IOC told GayStarNews this week, they risk violating Rule 50 of the Olympic charter, which states: “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”

“Regarding your suggestions,” an IOC spokesperson told GayStarNews, “the IOC has a clear rule laid out in the Olympic Charter (Rule 50) which states that the venues of the Olympic Games are not a place for proactive political or religious demonstration. This rule has been in place for many years and applied when necessary. In any case, the IOC would treat each case individually and take a sensible approach depending on what was said or done.” Any athlete who violates that rule, the IOC says, could be punished with disqualification.

more: http://thinkprogress.org/sports/2013/08/12/2452621/ (hat tip: big dog, LBN OP)

Sound at all familiar?! Don't punish the bigots, punish the ones speaking out!

[William769]

1. ...

The Olympians should say fuck you were not going.

[LeftofObama]

2. Seems to me this would be a perfect time for EACH and EVERY athlete

to wear a pride pin AND speak out against this horrible law. What is the IOC going to do, fine every athlete who participates in the Olympics?

[Xipe Totec]

3. It's the Nazi Olympics all over again, but in a rainbow nt

[MNBrewer]

4. Sometimes NAZI comparisons are apt.

[David__77]

7. But this is not such an occasion.

And I think that there would be ways to express opposition that could circumvent description as "political speech."

[MNBrewer]

8. Why is the comparison not apt?

[David__77]

9. I don't think we're on the precipice of genocide against Russian homosexual people.

The 1936 Olympics happened after Jewish people were deprived of their citizenship, and drummed out of all manner of occupations. They were being actively expropriated and removed from the body politic. There's no such process in play in Russia. It's more akin to laws that were implemented in the some parts of the US until not all too long ago.

I guess comparison is fine, provided the contrasting is done too - I think a lot more is dissimilar than similar.

How the Russian lesbian and gay community wants to structure their political efforts is in their own hands. However, I would suggest ways to create a patriotic Russian gay movement, as opposed to a cosmopolitan one that could readily be marginalized as "elitist" or "foreign-inspired" by Russian nationalists.

[FreeState]

10. I do

As I pointed out to you the other day the government is not allowing LGBT persons to adopt their own children. That is one of the definitions of genocide. The government is also working on a law to take children away from gay families. Sounds like they have already jumped over the precipice and are about to pull more on their way down.

[MNBrewer]

11. If we're simply talking about the matter of timing of the Olympic games

in the whole schema of the anti-Jewish program of the NAZIs, then I think that's a trivial difference.

The scale of the law against homosexual "propaganda" is sweeping in scope. And the vitriol in the rhetoric being put out by the State Media is breathtaking, e.g., the statement that the organs of homosexuals are unfit for transplant and should be burned or buried instead.

Laws have been proposed where homosexuals should be publicly whipped, for example. Members of Russia's military as well as paramilitary groups are physically attacking homosexuals who stand up for their basic human rights.

This is the tip of the anti-homosexual pogrom iceberg that is coming.

[Vanje]

12. David ,

Maybe if German people of good will, and others throughout the world, had spoken out strongly against Germany's treatment of Jews (and Gays!), in the early days of Fascist rule,
Maybe, just maybe, the genocide might have been thwarted.

You said:
"How the Russian lesbian and gay community wants to structure their political efforts is in their own hands."

If anyone had said this:
"How the German Jewish community wants to structure their political efforts is in their own hands." ,
then hindsight would not treat that statement kindly.

[Behind the Aegis]

16. By 1936, the death camps hadn't even broken ground, but the Nuremberg Laws had been established.

The Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating antisemitism as a form of scientific racism. There was a rapid growth in German legislation directed at Jews and other groups, such as the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service which banned "non-Aryans" and political opponents of the Nazis, from the civil-service.

The lack of a clear legal method of defining who was Jewish had, however, allowed some Jews to escape some forms of discrimination aimed at them. The enactment of laws identifying who was Jewish made it easier for the Nazis to enforce legislation restricting the basic rights of German Jews.

The Nuremberg Laws classified people with four German grandparents as "German or kindred blood", while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents. A person with one or two Jewish grandparents was a Mischling, a crossbreed, of "mixed blood".[1] These laws deprived Jews of German citizenship and prohibited marriage between Jews and other Germans.[2]

The Nuremberg Laws also included a ban on sexual intercourse between people defined as "Jews" and non-Jewish Germans and prevented "Jews" from participating in German civic life. These laws were both an attempt to return the Jews of 20th-century Germany to the position that Jews had held before their emancipation in the 19th century; although in the 19th century Jews could have evaded restrictions by converting, this was no longer possible.

The laws were a legal embodiment of an already existing Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws

It always starts with the laws!!

[bunnies]

5. Oh fucking really IOC?

Olympic Pride House: Government throws a party for the gays …

…and the Olympic president lets the crowd know he’s one of us

Friday appeared to be unofficial “throw a party for the gays day” here at the Olympics in Vancouver. Pride House organizers took leave of their posts for the night and went out to celebrate at not one, but two parties for the gay community.

The main event was an invitation-only party at B.C. Canada House, celebrating (to quote the invitation) “the vibrancy of B.C.’s diverse LGBT community.”

According to amateur Olympic historian Charley Walters of Olympics or Bust, this one goes down in history as the first time a government has thrown an Olympic party for the gay community

The speaker was none other than Philip Steenkamp, president and CEO of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic games.

http://outqnews.com/2010/02/20/olympic-pride-house-government-throws-a-party-for-the-gays/

[theHandpuppet]

6. To hell with them

I want to see the IOC disqualify an athlete for protesting Russia's campaign of hate. What a disgraceful sham.

[LostOne4Ever]

13. I can't help but think of this

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salute[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]In a 2011 speech to the University of Guelph, Akaash Maharaj, a member of the Canadian Olympic Committee and head of Canada's Olympic Equestrian team, said, "In that moment, Tommie Smith, Peter Norman, and John Carlos became the living embodiments of Olympic idealism. Ever since, they have been inspirations to generations of athletes like myself, who can only aspire to their example of putting principle before personal interest. It was their misfortune to be far greater human beings than the leaders of the IOC of the day."

[MNBrewer]

14. I think of this...

[LostOne4Ever]

19. I agree

But I don't want to give someone the chance to invoke Godwin's law on me....even if it is apt and works in everyway.

Not to mention that homosexuals were the first group to die by the Nazi's hands in the 1930's.

[MNBrewer]

20. Godwin's law only says that Nazis will be brought up in any internet thread

not that it's inappropriate

[theHandpuppet]

15. I'm old enough to remember watching that as it happened

It's one of those historic moments you carry with you always.

[LostOne4Ever]

18. I was not alive back then

But its one of the pictures from my old high school history books that stuck with me.

Again, im not an athlete and its probably a bit too easy for me to sit here and say this...but I believe that if I were an Olympic athlete competing....I would have black glove with a pink triangle on the back on me during the Olympics.

[Behind the Aegis]

17. And if this article is true, then anyone doing any such thing as above may be punished.

Personally, I hope every LGBTA athlete and supporter gets a tattoo with the rainbow flag in a conspicuous place. Or go for the gold, so to speak, and wear the armbands we were made to wear in Nazi Germany!