Well this ought to stick in Putin's craw. During the G20 Summit this week, President Obama will meet with at least 4 Russian LGBT rights groups. From Talking Points Memo:
President Barack Obama is set to meet with Russian LGBT rights groups as well as several other Russian human rights activists at this week's G20 summit in St. Petersburg, BuzzFeed reported Monday.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
More from the original article at BuzzFeed:
Four Russian non-governmental organizations told BuzzFeed Monday they had been invited to the meeting, scheduled for this Thursday at St. Petersburg’s Crowne Plaza Hotel. The groups include veteran human rights activists Lev Ponomarev and Lyudmila Alexeyeva, legal aid NGO director Pavel Chikov, and Coming Out, a St. Petersburg-based LGBT organization. Another local LGBT group, the LGBT Network, is believed to be attending, though director Igor Kochetkov declined to comment to BuzzFeed, saying that he had been “asked not to say anything.”
Election monitoring group Golos is also believed to have been invited, though BuzzFeed could not reach its director or deputy director to confirm. Russia’s justice ministry forced Golos, which used to receive funding from USAID, to disband this summer under a law on “foreign agents” that many believed was created specifically to target the group.
...
It is believed to be the first time Obama has met with members of the Russian LGBT community. Asked about Russia’s anti-LGBT law in August, Obama told Jay Leno that he had “no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them.”
http://www.buzzfeed.com/...
I don't take any joy in seeing Russia and the U.S. in a spat, but the Russian government definitely deserves public shaming for their recent anti-LGBT law. Perhaps this is also payback for Russia's sending lobbyists to Congress in DC to argue against a U.S. strike on Syria.