The IOC Played The Staring Game With The LGBT Movement — And Won Now what do we do?

[xchrom]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/saeedjones/the-ioc-played-the-staring-game-with-the-lgbt-movement-and-w



Last summer, as attention began focusing on a new anti-LGBT “propaganda” law in Russia, I had a nightmare. In the dream, I’m in a small gay bar in St. Petersburg. It’s a slow night with only a few guys around, mostly keeping to themselves — then a brick is thrown through the bar’s only window. The window is stained glass. I hear the shatter, turn on my bar stool to see the brick and the shards on the floor and then the moment freezes and resets itself. That one brick crashed through the window again and again and again, a cruel loop replaying itself against my will and wishes for it to stop or change. The horror was not just the act of violence, but the repetition and the fact that there was nothing I could do but watch.

Seven months later — after an almost unprecedented focus on LGBT issues in the run-up to the games — the Olympic flame has been extinguished in Sochi and, I fear, the kind of night I witnessed in that dream is descending yet again. Russia’s anti-LGBT propaganda law is as firmly in place as it was when Putin first signed it. LGBT people across Russia, major cities and rural areas alike, are no safer or freer.

What the hell just happened? In short, the IOC dug in its heels and waited for the outrage to exhaust itself.

In the months leading up to the Olympics, the organization — headed now by a former German Olympian, Thomas Bach — promised again and again that it had received “assurances” from Russian leaders that LGBT athletes and fans would not be discriminated against in Sochi. When American and European leaders began to announce that they would not be joining their Olympic delegations in Sochi, Bach chided them for “politicizing the games,” arguing that they should not work out political disagreements “on the backs of these athletes.” A “protest zone” was set up during the games that was more than 5 miles away from the central area where the Olympics were taking place.

[theHandpuppet]

1. This is what disappointed me the most

"Meanwhile, attention shifted to the Olympians themselves with the hope that they’d take some kind of a stand in Sochi. A rainbow flag during the parade of nations, or maybe even an athlete coming out during an interview. Perhaps disappointingly, the first and last sign of solidarity from an Olympian in Sochi came during the first day of the competition when out snowboarder Cheryl Maas raised a rainbow-hued glove after her run. And, much to the chagrin of LGBT activists, Irene Wust, the first out Olympian to win gold in Sochi, bragged about “cuddling” Putin when she met him after competing. “He congratulated me and asked me if everything was OK in Russia,” Wust told reporters from Dutch television network NOS...

I really didn't expect a damn thing from the corporate sponsors but I had hoped for more from the athletes. Though once I read Wust's much-publicized remarks and about her cuddles with Putrid, I knew the IOC had won.