So I was reading the New York Times earlier, and I found a scathing indictment of the new Russian policies concerning homosexuality by Harvey Fierstein which bears reading. No, during the past week nobody has mentioned Vladimir Putin, who is behind all of these policies unless it was in a diary about Edward Snowden. Well, lots of other people's rights are being trampled on, but they're ordinary Russians, and the people responsible for producing news reports really don't seem to care. As Fierstein notes at the beginning of his op-ed piece,
RUSSIA’S president, Vladimir V. Putin, has declared war on homosexuals. So far, the world has mostly been silent.
No, it's not KILL the gays, but . . .
Below the great orange armband, please. If you haven't been paying attention, you'll be amazed and, I hope, appalled.
This month, Putin has signed measures into law that bar the adoption of Russian children not just by same-sex couples but by ANYONE living in a country where marriage equality exists and that allow police officers to arrest tourists and foreign nationals who are gay, lesbian or pro-gay, including people arriving to compete in the 2014 Sochi Olympics. In June, he signed a broad and intentionally vague measure identifying "homosexual propaganda" as pornography which could conceivably apply to judges and lawmakers who plead for tolerance. It is also rumored that Putin will sign a law that allows the removal of children from families in which a parent is accused of being gay or lesbian. Why? The birthrate and to protect adoptive children from pedophiles.
But really?
Mr. Putin’s true motives lie elsewhere. Historically this kind of scapegoating is used by politicians to solidify their bases and draw attention away from their failing policies, and no doubt this is what’s happening in Russia. Counting on the natural backlash against the success of marriage equality around the world and recruiting support from conservative religious organizations, Mr. Putin has sallied forth into this battle, figuring that the only opposition he will face will come from the left, his favorite boogeyman.
Mr. Putin’s campaign against lesbian, gay and bisexual people is one of distraction, a strategy of demonizing a minority for political gain taken straight from the Nazi playbook. Can we allow this war against human rights to go unanswered? Although Mr. Putin may think he can control his creation, history proves he cannot: his condemnations are permission to commit violence against gays and lesbians. Last week a young gay man was murdered in the city of Volgograd. He was beaten, his body violated with beer bottles, his clothing set on fire, his head crushed with a rock. This is most likely just the beginning.
Wonderful. I guess there aren't enough Jews left in Russia to persecute. Olga Khazan, in
the Atlantic (June 12, 2013)
has another theory that will be depressingly familiar to those of us who remember how Prop 8 was passed, only this time it's the Russian Orthodox Church:
The Church's head, Patriarch Kirill, has been outspoken against "social ills" like alternative sexual orientations.
"The church has very strong anti-gay rhetoric, its getting stronger and stronger all the time," one St. Petersburg gay activist told PRI. "Five years ago, they would ignore the issue and now they say homosexuality is a sin."
It's no coincidence that the punk band Pussy Riot was sent to jail for performing in an Orthodox church, specifically. Kirill and other Church elders have also served as occasional Putin campaigners, issuing bizarre declarations that mash together Christianity and the longevity of United Russia. Kirill has said that "liberalism will lead to legal collapse and then the Apocalypse" and referred to Putin's presidency as "a miracle." Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov warned once that "one needs to remember that the first revolutionary was Satan."
A manifestation of anti liberalism in a country that, as she says, is facing large scale economic turmoil and widespread corruption. This isn't Mussolini's Italy, it's worse.
Two steps forward, one step back. Fierstein suggests that those Russian gay men and lesbians who can leave the country are doing so. Can you blame them?
Here's something you can do.
10:20 AM PT: I have some errands to run, but I'll be back in a couple of hours.