Box Turtle Bulletin

Georgia President Warns Putin’s Anti-Gay Campaign Part of Larger Effort To Influence Ex-Soviet Republics

Buzzfeed’s report by Max Seddon is the only original source I’ve run across, but I think it deserves attention. Outgoing Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili told the United Nations General Assembly last week that Russia’s foreign policy under President Vladimir Putin is “fueled by intolerance” in a bid to increase its influence over other countries of the former Soviet Union. The Russian delegation walked out during Saakashvili’s remarks. Saakashvili later expanded his comments in an interview with Seddon:

Saakashvili is concerned that a wave of anti-gay pressure inspired by Russia’s law may spread to Georgia: Moldova has already adopted a similar law, and Armenia came close to doing so last month. In May, 50 LGBT activists who attempted to hold a pride parade in the capital, Tbilisi, had to flee after thousands of Georgians – led by Orthodox priests – chased them through the streets, roughing up anyone they suspected of being gay. In the aftermath, anti-gay Georgians told media that they were angry that tolerance was being forced upon them by the West.

Saakashvili says the Kremlin’s embrace of anti-gay policies is Putin’s last desperate attempt to rein in his old empire. “He had nothing to offer to his former zone of influence. He has no soft power. He has no economic benefits to offer them,” Saakashvili says. “So what he’s telling them: ‘OK, Europe is promising you much more, it’s a better market, they might give you subsidies, they might give you lots of new opportunities and openings. But what you should know is Europe is all about gay rights. If you go to Europe, your family values will be undermined, your traditions will be destroyed. So we as Orthodox unity, we should stick together.'”

In 1991 and 1992, Georgia fought a war against Russian separatists in the Georgian republic of South Ossetia. That war ended with much of South Ossetia in the hands of a Russian-backed government that was unrecognized elsewhere in the world. In 2008, Georgia launched an attack to regain control of South Ossetia in a war that saw Russian troops cross into Georgia to occupy South Ossetia and Abkhazi, where they remain today.

IOC Says It’s “Fully Satisfied” With Russia’s Anti-Gay Law

According to the Associated Press:

The International Olympic Committee has dismissed concerns over Russia’s law banning gay propaganda, saying it doesn’t violate the Olympic charter’s anti-discrimination clause, and pronounced Russia ready to host the 2014 Winter Games.

Jean-Claude Killy, chairman of the IOC Coordination Commission, gave his stamp of approval during a news conference Thursday at the conclusion of the commission’s 10th and final visit to Sochi before the games, which begin on Feb. 7.

…Killy said the commission deliberated for several days and concluded “the IOC doesn’t have the right to discuss the laws that are in place in the country hosting the games, so unless the charter is violated we are fully satisfied.”

This comes despite several contradictory statements by Russian officials about how Russia’s so-called “anti-propaganda” law would impact Olympic athletes and visitors. Earlier this month, the head of the Sochi Olympics asked the IOC to somehow make the rest of the world shut up about the draconian law. The IOC’s response then was to do Russia’s bidding, and ask athletes to keep quiet in Sochi like good Russian citizens. None of this was ever in any doubt, not with the real bottom line being:

Killy said the IOC commission was pleased with the ongoing construction ahead of the games, which with a total cost of $51 billion will be the most expensive Olympics in history.

 

Regnerus Study Featured In Russian Anti-Gay Propaganda

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGCkhcwGres&feature=player_embedded

A new anti-gay propaganda video is making the rounds in Russia, which includes these claims:

But what to the experts say? Mark Regnerus, professor at Texas University, began his study in 2010. His findings were that one fourth of children being raised by same-sex parents showed a tendency toward suicide and had contracted venereal diseases and sixty percent of children struggle with their sexual identity. Moreover, one in three children being raised by same-sex couples were needed by their adopted parents for sex. So this is why, gays especially, are happy for children to be adopted by gays. They need children to satisfy their sexual desire.

Regnerus’s discredited study appears to have gone viral in Russia. When pressed, Regnerus will sometimes admits that his study cannot support the claims that he makes that gay parenting results in worse outcomes in children — only two kids in his study were actually raised by gay parents for their entire childhoods —  but he then continued to make those claims anyway. But Regnerus now expresses his dismay at discovering that his study is being misrepresented in Russia. This is odd. After he contorted his data and applied logical fallacies in the rushed service of bought and paid-for anti-gay politics in America, he now complains that others are using it to further a similar agenda.

He may, as well, complain that this particular video is a gross misrepresentation of what his study actually says — and that’s even after his own gross misrepresentation of what the data says that went into his study. And he’d be correct, but frankly, he has no room to complain. The Russians are only doing to his study what he did to his data set. The best he can muster is a complaint about the relative degree misrepresentation, and that won’t get him very far. He may as well get used to sharing his bed with Russians propagandists for a very long time to come.

McCain criticizes Putin

Today Sen John McCain took advantage of the offer to write a letter in Pravda to the Russian people in response to Putin’s LA Times opinion piece. He was harshly critical of the Russian leadership accusing Putin and his administration of corruption and oppression. He had examples: (Pravda)

They write laws to codify bigotry against people whose sexual orientation they condemn. They throw the members of a punk rock band in jail for the crime of being provocative and vulgar and for having the audacity to protest Putin’s rule.

Famous Russian cured of the homosexuality

The glorious republic of Russia has developed a process for the removal of the homosexuality. So powerful is this process that the known homosexual doesn’t need to be present. In fact, he doesn’t even need to be alive.

While this exciting breakthrough – illustrating Russia’s superior scientific position – has not have yet been tested on insignificant homosexual in the great nation, it has been illustrated as most effective in removing the homosexuality one of the Mother Country’s best known citizens. (Guardian)

Russia’s culture minister has denied that composer Peter Tchaikovsky was gay, discarding what has long been regarded as historical fact. Vladimir Medinsky claimed that there was no evidence to suggest the 19th-century composer was anything other than a lonely man who failed to find a suitable woman to marry.

Experts agree that Tchaikovsky is much pleased with his new status as a lonely man and gives praise to the most excellent President Putin and Minister Medinsky. Bolstered by this astonishing news, the ghost of Rudolf Nureyev has put in a petition with the culture minister to see if he too could qualify for reorientation.

NBC News Brings Scott Lively to Mainstream America

We’ve been following Scott Lively for six years now, through his activities in Novosibirsk, Riga, and Kampala. When Russia passed a so-called “anti-propaganda” law which effectively prohibits all advocacy and positive portrayals of gay people, Lively rushed to take credit for it. But with the exception for a brief period in 2009 after Uganda’s parliament proposed a law which would include the death penalty for gay people, Lively hasn’t made much of an impression in the mainstream media. Today, NBC News published a significant profile which gets the rest of America caught up to date with the impact that Lively has had around the world:

Lively has reason to be a bit cocky. America may have “fallen to the gays,” he says, but much of the world still fears them and Lively is working to keep it that way.

In Moldova in 2011, according to Human Rights Watch, he helped several cities declare themselves “gay-free zones” and organized an “emergency” campaign to block a law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine and Belarus he met with politicians and pastors, fostering talk of new curbs on gay rights. Every place he goes, Lively says, his goal is to block the open expression of homosexuality, keep discrimination legal and make pro-gay advocacy a crime.

To whip up support for such policies, Lively simply shares his beliefs about gay people: They’re dangerous predators, even killers. And they caught this gay “disorder” through “an evil game of tag,” a chain of abuse in which gays recruit kids into sodomy just as they were once recruited. In this way homosexuality spreads like “a social cancer,” he claims, until nothing remains of the Christian world.

NBC has re-posed portions of video from Lively’s talks in Novosibirsk and Riga, videos which are no longer available at their original locations. Tony Dokoupil’s report provides more information about the extent of Lively’s 2007 tour, which turns out to be more extensive than I had originally thought. Dokoupil also draws a line from Lively’s virulent rhetoric to some of the violence which often follows:

In Oregon in 1992, a same-sex couple died when their house was firebombed during OCA’s campaign to declare homosexuality “abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse.” In Sacramento in 2007, a gay man was called a “faggot” and punched to death by a stranger in a park. In Uganda in 2011, the country’s first openly gay man had his skull caved in. And right now in Russia and in the former Soviet states, there’s been a surge in homophobic vigilantism, including a torrent of shaming videos, some depicting gay teens being tortured by skinheads. Lively has not been linked to any of these crimes but we asked: Couldn’t his talk of predatory gays, “good and evil,” and “war” have played a role?

“Wow, that’s a leap,” said Lively, who sees his work as advocacy in the public interest, no different from campaigning against drunk drivers.

Lively is probably best known within the gay community for his 2009 conference in Uganda. Lively would later brag that the conference was his “nuclear bomb against the gay agenda,” and he immodestly dubbed himself the father of the anti-homosexuality movement in Uganda. Ugandan activists are currently suing Lively in U.S. Federal District Court, alleging that Lively engaged in a conspiracy to deny the LGBT community of their rights and safety under International Law, and that conspiracy resulted in harm to the LGBT community. Lively is being sued under the Alien Tort Statute, which provides federal jurisdiction for “any civil action by an alien, for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.”  Dokoupil adds this concerning the lawsuit:

Pamela Spees, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, the group pursuing Lively for alleged “crimes against humanity” in Uganda, said she is prepared to file a second lawsuit related to his work in Russia and the surrounding countries, assuming there’s evidence that Lively was “an architect of the persecutory program” there.

And that’s why the case against Lively is so important, gay-rights activists say. As the Olympics draw nearer and the boycotts and homophobic backlash continue, Putin will be the guy paraded down the world’s front pages and social media feeds. But Lively may be the secret agent to watch.

If he loses his lawsuit he could be prohibited from spreading his message abroad, a terrible precedent for other anti-gay crusaders. However if he wins, he emerges stronger than ever, the self-described “hero” of an expanding fight to restore “godliness to society,” as he puts it – or else “pull as many people as possible into the lifeboat before the ship goes down.”

We’ve been following Scott Lively for several years, ever since he first popped up on our radar in 2007 when he was in Riga, Latvia in a stop on a far-flung tour of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union sponsored by a new international anti-gay organization, Watchmen On the Walls. (That organization now appears to be inactive.) Soon, video appeared of a talk Lively gave earlier in March in Riga. I was then alerted to video of a talk that Lively gave in Novosibirsk in August, where he warned:

There is a war that is going on in the world. There is a war that is waging across the entire face of the globe. It’s been waging in the United States for decades, and it’s been waging in Europe for decades. It’s a war between Christians and homosexuals. …And this is the design of the Devil to destroy civilization, because civilization is based on the natural family.

Then in November, Lively was back in Riga for a multi-day Watchmen conference. On the first day, Lively complained that the United States was under the iron grip of the homosexual agenda, which he called the product of Satan, “the father of lies“:

You have to understand how this battle works. We follow the God of truth. The Holy Spirit, who is called the Spirit of Truth, lives inside of us. But our adversaries follow the father of lies. Scripture calls him the “father of lies.” They can’t tell the truth, and they won’t tell the truth because they don’t want people to listen to what we have to say. But we can’t say anything that would give them proof that what they teach is right… So we must be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. We won’t stop telling the truth, and they won’t stop telling the lies. But this is a war.

In a later talk at the same conference, Lively disclosed what he called secrets that “homosexuality community doesn’t want you to know”: that homosexuality is a disorder, that homosexuality is like an addiction but also that homosexuality is voluntary, that homosexuals really don’t want to be homosexual, and that the only reason we remain homosexual is because the leaders of the homosexual movement have made us afraid of Christians. He also read aloud an open letter to the Russian people, in which he advocated:

…[C]riminalize the public advocacy of homosexuality. My philosophy is to leave homosexuals alone if they keep their lifestyle private, and not to force them into therapy if they don’t want it. However, homosexuality is destructive to individuals and to society and it should never publicly promoted. The easiest way to discourage “gay pride” parades and other homosexual advocacy is to make such activity illegal in the interest of public health and morality.

Russia has effectively done that, after President Vladimir Putin signed the so-called “anti-propaganda” into law last June.

The farce that is international gay “support”

Ya know, you reach a point where you realize that it’s all just words, that the defense of gay rights has become less about gay people and more about the chance to pat yourself on the back. And nothing has illustrated this more to me that the recent “controversy” over Russia’s horribly oppressive anti-gay laws.

Oh, the international community is Raising Concerns. And leaders are Talking Sternly. And the International Olympic Committee is having meetings and getting Assurances. And everyone is oh so very very very concerned that Russia not … well, let’s not be too specific about what they’re concerned about.

It doesn’t seem to be free speech rights. The IOC is very clear that they don’t want to change Russia’s law. And every newspaper – other than gay media – uses the word “propaganda” or “youth” every paragraph so as to make sure that everyone knows that this is perhaps a tiny bit concerning but not really all that unreasonable. Because propaganda and youth, you know.

And they’ve heard our concerns and, goodness gracious, we can’t have conflict. Conflict is bad. And the Olympics is a time of coming together and getting along and setting aside differences.

So maybe it’s just best that we shut up.

The corporate sponsors of the Olympics have become concerned that their name and product will be associated with civil rights violations. And they’ve expressed concern to the IOC, who passed that on to Russia. And the response: (msnbc)

A senior IOC official said Monday that sponsors, especially U.S. sponsors, are concerned about the law and are “afraid” of the potential fallout at next year’s Olympic Games. “I think this could ruin a lot for all of us. We have to be prepared,” marketing commission chairman Gerhard Heiberg said. “We can see many ways this could happen. I heard a lot from the sponsors, especially the American sponsors, what they are afraid of could happen.”

IOC President Jacques Rogge allayed any fears of possible demonstrations in Sochi and said the committee will remind athletes to refrain from protests or political gestures during the Games. “The constitution of the Russian federations allows for homosexuality,” Rogge said. “And we have received strong reassurances that this law will not affect participants in the Sochi Games.”

And so what is the official position of the IOC? That which Russian assigned them.

The head of Sochi’s organizing committee, Dmitry Chernyshenko, said that the law which bans “homosexual propaganda” would not affect the games as it would not apply to Olympic athletes, fans and media. He said the law has been misinterpreted by protesters and activists, and urged the IOC to communicate the message to “those who are still trying to speculate on this very transparent and very clear topic,” that Russia does not ban homosexuality.

“It’s very important to have your support to stop this campaign and this speculation regarding this issue,” Chernyshenko said.

We’ve been told that there are no reasons for concern. No one will be arrested… unless they break the law. Unless they, as Olympians, make any statements of any type, verbal or otherwise, that express anything other than contempt for gay people or gay rights.

And that is far far more inclusive than the mainstream press is emphasizing.

Take, for example, the arrest of Dmitry Isakov, who held a sign “Being gay and loving gays is normal. Beating gays and killing gays is a crime!” Not exactly the most radical statement, but in Russia that’s propaganda.

But the real interesting part of Isakov’s arrest was not the message. (Buzzfeed)

Police filed the charges on the basis of a complaint from a teenager in the northern Arkhangelskaya province who had seen Isakov’s protest online.

Oh yeah, the internet is fair game. But we have nothing to fear. No sirree, we can rest assured that as long as an athlete has never, ever, made a statement in opposition to, say, beating gay people that can be found in the media or online, then they have nothing to fear.

And Russia need not even be the bad guy. The IOC will happily punish any athlete that makes a “political” statement, because of Rule 50: “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted”. Ah, there’s that lovely word again, “propaganda”. And the IOC has made it very clear that Russian President Putin gets to define that term.

Oh, and our “allies”, the representatives from enlightened nations to the IOC, they have our back, right? Nope. (USAtoday)

Dick Pound of Canada weighed in on the issue a bit more pointedly. He called the law “disgusting” but said athletes need to respect their status as guests in Sochi. Pound said national Olympic committees should warn their athletes about the consequences. “You say to your kids, ‘If you screw around with this we’ll send you home.”

And if an athlete challenges such a mandate? “If there have been lots of warnings, there’s no excuse for it,” Pound said. “Then it becomes a provocation.”

Yes, yes, it’s horrible that the official position of a nation is that your existence is illegal – and let’s be honest, any law that makes declaring one’s existence to be illegal is nondifferentiable from one that makes one’s existence illegal – but just be good little faggots and shut up. Don’t rock the boat. We have big important international cooperation here and a mutual congratulatory event and don’t you dare raise any issues which might disprove our display of consanguinity.

Oh, and look at how wonderful we are for raising your little issue. See what an advocate of civil rights we are and such firm negotiators too; We convinced Putin to give “assurances”. You should pat us on the back!

And the US rep is no better:

American Anita DeFrantz, who was elected to the influential executive board on Tuesday, said punishment for small statements such as nail polish sounds a bit much. It also raises complicated questions. What if someone’s rainbow pin is just a good luck charm?

Surely we can allow a good luck charm, so long as it isn’t in support of the humanity of an oppressed minority. Cuz if you support humanity, then it’s only reasonable to send you home.

And meanwhile at the United Nations, a symbolic statement has allowed politicians another chance to look wonderful while doing nothing whatsoever.

There is a tradition at Olympics time for the host nation to write Olympic Truce, a resolution calling for friendly competition and the cause of peace. And this year Russia included a clause promising to include “people of different age, sex, physical capacity, religion, race and social status”.

It was pointed out that there was one group missing from that list, people of different sexual orientation.

Well there was no way – no way at all – that Russia was going to include people of different sexual orientation. So our “allies” brokered a solution; the language was changed to “promote social inclusion without discrimination of any kind.” And we can all pretend that this includes gay people, even though we know with absolute certainty that it does not. (NYTimes)

“I think it’s a very good outcome, and I think the Russians want to have a consensus to adopt this,” said Iakovos Iakovidis, a Greek representative to the United Nations, who was one of several officials in support of revising the statement. “I think people will be happy with this.”

No, Iakovidis, I’m not happy with this.

It’s bovine manure. It’s a bogus make-happy effort to do nothing while pretending to say something. It’s zero, nothing at all.

Meanwhile Bach and Rogge and Heiberg and Pound and DeFrantz and Iakovidis haven’t gotten around to noticing the latest Russian legislative proposal, taking away the children of gay parents. And when that passes, and it will, we can predict the result. “We are very concerned but Putin has given “assurances” that no athlete’s children will be seized (if they leave them at home). So shhhh, don’t rock the boat. We have a mega-billion dollar industry, ummm sporting event, to put on here and we really don’t give a flying fig about what Putin does to your type of people.”

But we Raised The Issue. And gosh, maybe we should get a medal for being On Your Side. And for Looking Out For Civil Rights.

Sochi Olympic Chief to IOC: Make the Criticisms Stop. IOC to Athletes: Stop Criticizing When in Sochi

This tells you everything you need to know about Russia’s inability to cope with free debate:

The head of the Sochi Olympics asked the IOC on Sunday to help “stop this campaign and this speculation” related to the anti-gay law that has been overshadowing preparations for next year’s Winter Games in Russia.

The IOC would like all worldwide athletes to shut up and behave like good Russian patriots:

(IOC marketing commission chairman Gerhard) Heiberg raised the issue of concerns among sponsors.

“Lately there has been a lot of discussion, especially in Western Europe and in the United States, and I’m being pushed by several of the sponsors asking what will happen with this new law in Russian in connection with the gay community,” he said. “We are not to try to change anything over the laws in Russia. We will of course accept this as internal Russian decision. But what will the consequences be?”

Heiberg cited Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter, which says “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”

“We have to be prepared,” he said. “We can see many ways this could happen. I heard a lot from the sponsors, especially the American sponsors, what they are afraid of could happen.”

Rogge said athletes would soon be reminded about their responsibility to abide by the IOC regulations related to protests in the charter.

According to the AP, IOC President Jacques Rogge said he “satisfied” with Russia’s explanations so far. What’s particularly chilling, if Heiberg’s words are to be taken at face value, is that Olympic sponsors’ fears about “fallout” from potential demonstrations appear to be resulting in pressure on the IOC and Russian officials to make sure they don’t occur.

Russian Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Take Children Away from Gay Parents

Russian State Duma Deputy Akexey Zhuravlev has published a draft bill on Parliament’s web site which would make the “fact of nontraditional sexual orientation” a cause for denying custody for gay parents over their children. According to the Kremlin-backed Russia Today:

State Duma deputy from United Russia parliamentary caucus claims that the recently introduced ban on promotion of non-traditional sex relations to minors should be extended to families. Therefore, homosexual parents have no right to raise their children.

MP Aleksey Zhuravlev submitted the suggested amendments to the Family Code to the State Duma on Thursday. The explanatory note to the bill reads that non-traditional sexual orientation of one or both parents would become sufficient reason to deprive both of them of their parental rights.

“Following the letter of the law that forbids propaganda of non-traditional sex to minors we must restrict such propaganda not only in mass media but also the family,” Zhuravlev wrote. His reasoning is that “if one of the child’s parents indulges in sexual contact with persons of the same sex, the damage to the child’s psyche is immense as a mother or father serves as an example for their offspring.”

The amendments should apply to those whose families have already collapsed because of the non-traditional contacts of one of the spouses and also to the families where non-traditional sex is openly practiced by one of the parents, the note reads. It adds that for cases when a wife simply suspects her husband of non-traditional sex, the court and the Investigative Committee (Russia’s top law enforcement agency created for dealing with especially important and resonant cases), “have specialists trained in everything.” [Emphasis in the original.]

Russia Today also notes that in accompanying supporting documents, Zhuravlev refers the the fraudulent and debunked paper published in 2012 by University of Austin professor Mark Regnerus, whose paper was paid for with a $700,000 from the Witherspoon Institute.

 Russia Today reports that several top Deputies are “very skeptical about the initiative.” RIA Novosti adds:

The idea of stripping LGBT parents of their rights was first aired in June by ultraconservative Duma lawmaker Yelena Mizulina, an ardent backer of the ban on “gay propaganda.”

Mizulina’s proposal prompted one of Russia’s most prominent gay rights champions, liberal journalist Masha Gessen, to leave Russia for the United States. Gessen said she feared the two children she was raising with her girlfriend could be taken away from her.

“As a gay parent I must flee Russia or lose my children,” Gessen, who holds dual Russian-American citizenship, said in an op-ed in The Guardian newspaper last month.

Zhuravlev, a member of Putin’s United Russia party as well as the All-Russia People’s Front, was selected to lead Russia’s newly-reconstituted nationalist Rodina (short for Motherland-National Patriotic Union) party last year.

Six Conservative American Organizations Sign On To Support Russia’s Anti-Gay Law

Six American organizations have joined an international coalition in a statement supporting Russia’s so-called “anti-propaganda” law which prohibits persons and organizations from expressing their free speech rights for LGBT people. Of course, free speech rights against LGBT people are fully protected while anti-LGBT violence is officially ignored.

Six American conservative groups have signed on: the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, GrassTopsUSA, His Servants, Linda Harvey’s Mission America, Population Research Institute, and the World Congress of Families, which will hold its next Congress in Moscow in 2014. The statement repeats Russia’s propaganda that the legislation is only meant to “protect (the) innocence and moral formation of children“: (PDF: 68KB/4 pages):

Scott Lively Sings His Praises To Putin

In 2006 and 2007, Scott Lively undertook a fifty day Watchmen On the Walls tour of the former Soviet Union when, during a stop in Novosibirsk, Lively regaled his cheering audience with the tale of the murder of Satendar Singh, a 26-year-old gay Fijian of Indian origin, who was killed near Sacramento, California by at least two Russian immigrants. During that same tour, Lively released his “Letter to the Russian People,” calling on Russia to launch a campaign to “protect Russia from the ‘gay’ movement.” His first recommendation was to “begin an immediate campaign in every city to promote marriage and family values.” Then:

Second, begin training doctors, psychologists and therapists in the techniques of helping homosexuals to recover, and offer this therapy as a public service. Promote recovery for homosexuals in public advertising and reach out to young people who may suffer from same-sex attraction. Catch it early and spare these youths a lifetime of pain and suffering. Importantly, if Russian authorities publicly promote recovery for homosexuals, the “gays” will not be able to deceive the public with their “born the way” propaganda.

Third, criminalize the public advocacy of homosexuality. My philosophy is to leave homosexuals alone if they keep their lifestyle private, and not to force them into therapy if they don’t want it. However, homosexuality is destructive to individuals and to society and it should never publicly promoted. The easiest way to discourage “gay pride” parades and other homosexual advocacy is to make such activity illegal in the interest of public health and morality.

Last June, Vladimir Putin signed a law which effectively implements Lively’s third recommendation, making it a criminal offense for anyone, gay or straight, to perform what would be in America a rather unremarkable exercise of their First Amendment rights, by advocating for or on behalf of LGBT people. Lively harkens the ghosts of the Soviet Union’s official repression of samizdat literature and makes the display of the equivalent of Frank Kameny’s 1960s-era “Gay is Good” buttons grounds for arrest and criminal prosecution.

Other anti-gay extremists, who three months ago wouldn’t have given two positive thoughts about Putin’s opposition-jailing, media-controlling, vote-rigging, violence-ridden and corruption-plagued oligarchy, are now falling over themselves in praising Putin’s “family values.” State-controlled Voice of Russia turned to the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer as an “expert” on homosexuality, who praised Russia’s anti-gay law as “homorealistic.” In Pat Buchanan’s rambling rant on August 13, he commended Putin for “trying to re-establish the Orthodox Church as the moral compass of the nation.” Rush Limbaugh and the Daily Caller have also expressed their admiration for Putin’s new Russia. That these former cold-warriers are lining up to sing Putin’s praises for passing a Soviet-like law that would be condemned by our own forefathers tells you pretty much everything you need to know about them.

As for Lively, he’s feeling his oats, claiming credit for Russia’s so-called “anti-propaganda” law and urging them on for more anti-LGBT policies. Last Friday, he released “An Open Letter to President Vladimir Putin,” cautioning the Russian leader “not to assume that you have fully solved the problem by the enactment of this law. The battle to protect your society from homosexualization has only just begun”:

In the coming months and years Russia and Her people will be increasingly portrayed by emotion laden and abusive hyperbole as bigoted haters, intent on exterminating homosexuals. Indeed, the propaganda campaign on that theme has already been initiated, with video footage purporting to show Russian neo-Nazis beating homosexuals now being circulated on the Internet, along with the false implication that this is the intent of your policy. This same propaganda machinery and methodology has been grinding away against the country of Uganda since 2009 when it introduced (but never passed) its Anti-Homosexuality Bill (AHB) that I agree was far too harsh but which never reflected any intention of the Ugandan government to exterminate homosexuals as “gay” activists and their media allies continue to allege.

Indeed, this “gay” narrative that equates opposition to homosexuality with Nazi-like genocide is in part an attempt to obscure the ugly roots of the modern homosexualist movement in pre-Nazi Germany. German fascism was formed and facilitated by masculine-oriented male homosexuals in response to an effeminate model of homosexuality which held that all homosexualist men were actually female souls trapped in men’s bodies. Beginning in the 1860s the Femmes, following the Grandfather of Gay Rights, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, built a powerful social and political movement in Germany which focused on repealing the sodomy laws.

Offended by the constant characterization of male homosexuality as effeminate, the masculine-oriented Butches created their own movement grounded in the male warrior-cult philosophy epitomized by ancient Sparta. These were the first German fascists and from their ranks came first the Brown Shirted brawlers of World War I and then the Nazi Party. This thesis is heavily documented in my book The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, which I co-authored in 1995 with researcher Kevin E. Abrams.

That was Friday. In case Putin missed Lively’s love-letter due to the long holiday weekend (Who knew they celebrated Labor Day in Russia?) , Lively has today posted a follow-up, in which he sings his “Praise for Putin“:

While America and Britain compete to see how fast they can turn their children into Sodomites, Russia has banned homosexual propaganda to youth. While the “mainstream” American and British press publish only pro-“gay” puffery and propaganda, Russia’s Pravda has become a counter-balance to their lies. While the US and UK public schools have erected an iron curtain to prevent students from encountering any pro-family arguments or advocates, the Russian schools are preparing their boys and girls for healthy, normal marriage. And while the “Land of the Free” and its Mother Country (which once promised that “Britons never, ever, ever shall be slaves”) embrace police-state tactics against Bible-believing Christians, the former Communist slave state is becoming a beacon of freedom to those who love God’s design for the family.

…I will close this letter with the same words I wrote to him, invoking the battle we waged together against Nazism:

“Once again, thank you, President Putin, for standing firm in defense of the natural family, which is the essential foundation of all human civilization. Perhaps through the inspiration of your leadership, an alliance of the good people of our countries with those of your own, can once again in some cooperative fashion, redeem the future of mankind from a Fascist Leviathan, just as we did in World War II.”

A Brief History of Gay Life in Russia

Tchaikovsky is known to have had several male lovers.

It seems like a good time to take a look back at what life’s been like for gays in Russia historically. Kevin Moss of Middlebury College has a great page documenting the history of being gay in Russia, as does Wikipedia. Here’s a brief outline of what that history looks like:

• — 16-19th century – there were many reports from Europeans of unabashed same-sex affection in public; Sergei Soloviev wrote that “nowhere, either in the Orient or in the West, was this vile, unnatural sin taken as lightly as in Russia.”
• — 17th century Russia saw homosexual relations banned within the military, spearheaded by Peter the Great
• — 1832 sees the first civil law, Article 995, outlawing muzhelozhstvo, or sodomy, complete with a 5 year sentence in Siberia. Article 995, however, was largely ignored, especially among the elite
• — The Golden Age for gays in Russia was roughly the turn of the century until 1933. During this time, important figures like Vladimir Nabokov’s father, a legislator in the original Russian Duma, argued that the state shouldn’t criminalize private sexual acts. In 1906, Mikhail Kuzhmin published the first coming out book printed in Russia, titled Wings, which became one of the most talked-about books of its day. In the fields of ballet, the arts, and even the Imperial Court there were various accounts of gay men living fairly openly and, in 1917 when the Bolsheviks came to power and revamped the entire civil code, Article 995 was abolished and gays, women, and minorities freer than ever before. Even then, however, Kuzhmin’s poetry remained fairly bleak: 
  

  Mikhail Kuzhmin, author of “Wings

  
  December frosts the rosy sky,
  Black the rooms of this unheated house;
  And we, . . .
  We read the Bible and we wait
  We wait. And do we know what for?
  Can it be for a redeeming hand? (1920)

  
  Even without anti-sodomy laws, the Bolsheviks were never very comfortable with human sexuality and much of the literature of the time treated homosexuality as an illness that science could possibly cure; however, criminalizing sodomy was seen by the Bolsheviks as backward and bourgeois and allowed only in “lesser” republics like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Finally Stalin, in 1933, approved Article 121 as part of his (Putin-like) return to “family” values, outlawing muzhelozhstvo coupled with a 5 year sentence, or worse.

  

  “верните народу” / “Return to the People” — sign outlining Article 121 and its punishment of sodomy and the fight against pederasty.

• — 1933 to 1993 — Russian society during Stalin’s rule and throughout the Soviet period tended to understand homosexuality as part of pedophilia an muzhelozhstvo became an easy way to purge undesirables from the government. During Kruschev’s cultural thaw the viewpoint seemed to change somewhat, between a focus on protecting children to a focus on protecting other men, most commonly in prison.  Few records of enforcement of Article 121 from the 1930s through the 1970s have been found but several thousand men were charged with muzhelozhstvo every year during the 1980s.  “Pleshkas,” gay cruising sites common during the Soviet period, were recently painted by artist Yevgeniy Fiks — ironically, pleshkas tended to be near Soviet monuments and statuary.
  

  A “pleshka” near the outer walls of the Kremlin

• 1993-2013 — With the collapse of the Soviet Union, like with the fall of the Russian monarchy, laws criminalizing muzhelozhstvo were again taken off the books, this time as an outreach to the West.  The ’90s saw a relative thaw in Moscow and the larger cities with a small gay press, dance clubs, etc. and some journalists reported seeing out gay couples on the streets.  Most Russians will tell you that few people in the 90s were focused on social causes but instead on more pressing things like, will there be electricity in my apartment tonight? Putin’s rise in 1999 began to address these Maslowian problems and muzhelozhstvo once more found its way into the news cycle; a law banning it was proposed in 2002 (it lost) and then the oblast of Ryazan in 2006 passed a law now commonly known as the “anti-gay propaganda” law. Two organizations were founded in response, Gayrussia.ru and the Russian LGBT network and a (banned) parade has been held in Moscow every year since May 2006. Steadily since 2006 when Ryazan spearheaded the anti-gay campaign and lgbt rights activists reacted, the more conservative elements of Russian society began to coalesce and leaders from various religions (as well as the mayor of Moscow in 2007) openly condemned the parades.
• Bans on homosexual propaganda, 2006-2013. What began in Ryazan spread, within 6 years, to 9 other oblasts including that of St. Petersburg. Contrary to recent comparisons made between Nazi Germany and Russia, Putin did not spearhead anti-gay sentiment and did not regularly make public statements against muzhelozhstvo. These efforts have largely been grass roots and led by coalitions of religious and fringe skinhead groups which have focused primarily on pedophiles. Even so, as their popularity has grown, Putin has formally embraced the new laws, especially since anti-Putin protests gained prominence in 2012.
• June 2013 — the Russian state Duma passed a federal ban on “homosexual propaganda.”

Most of us are fairly familiar with the well-publicized goings on in Russia since the passage of this new law — gays, lesbians, and transgender people beaten in the streets, outspoken gay people fired from their jobs, adoption rights taken away, etc. This new law goes farther than any law before in Russian history and is much savvier than the bans in the past of simple muzhelozhstvo — the new law sets the terms of the conversation determining that any discussion of gays necessarily includes a discussion of pedophiles and the protection of children while, because sodomy is not explicitly banned, the Russian government can maintain that there is no discrimination against gay people per se.

Russia To IOC: We Won’t Arrest Gay People, Except When We Will

Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak “reassured” — that’s the IOC’s word for it — the International Olympic Committee that Russia will comply with the Olympic Charter’s provision against discrimination. But…

In his letter, Kozak said the legislation does not impose any restrictions on sexual orientation, and stressed the Russian constitution prohibits discrimination against anyone based on sex, race or religion.

The law on gay propaganda, he said, centers on the “restriction of information that promotes non-traditional sexual relationships among children.”

“These legislations apply equally to all persons, irrespective of their race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, and cannot be regarded as discrimination based on sexual orientation,” he said.

The letter added: “These requirements do not attract any limitations for participants and spectators of the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi on their legal right of residence in the territory of the Russian Federation or participation in any events stipulated in the Games program that are contradictory to the Olympic Charter or universally recognized standards of international law on human rights.”

Kozak’s vigorous defense of the law and his laughable definition of discrimination leaves unanswered what will happen to athletes or spectators if they make any statements or gestures that could be interpreted as “propaganda.” Which is fine with IOC President Jacques Rogge, who just wants everyone to forget that anything is happening at all. He hailed the letter as “strong written reassurances from the Russian government that everyone will be welcome at the games in Sochi regardless of their sexual orientation.”

Kirchick’s Stand on Russian Television

RT (Russia Today), a Kremlin-funded television “news” channel designed to sell Russia to the rest of the world, invited Jamie Kirchick to speak about the Bradley Manning sentencing. But noting that RT has already been talking non-stop about Bradley Maning for the 24 hours, Kirchick said it was time to change the subject for two minutes: “I’m not really interested in talking about Bradley Manning. I’m interested in talking about the horrific environment of homophobia in Russia right now.”

Kirchick spoke to RT from a studio in Stockholm. The drama continued even after the camera switched off:

He has since said the taxi driver in the car he was in on his way to the airport in Sweden when the taxi driver received a phone call instructing him to drop Kirchick off at the side of the road.

“So about halfway down the highway on the way to the airport, my driver gets a phone call from his boss saying that the car ride has been cancelled and that he’ll have to drop me off on the side of the road,” he said.

“And I told him that I would pick up the tab. But at the end, actually, at the airport, he said that the ride was free, so maybe we have some anti-Putin activists in the Swedish taxi company.”

And that’s the way to come out

This is a smart, effective method to make the best of coming out.

August 21, 2013

Re: St. Petersburg International Film Festival / “Guest of Honor” Invitation

Dear Ms. Averbakh:

Thank you for your kind invitation. As someone who has enjoyed visiting Russia in the past and can also claim a degree of Russian ancestry, it would make me happy to say yes.

However, as a gay man, I must decline.

I am deeply troubled by the current attitude toward and treatment of gay men and women by the Russian government. The situation is in no way acceptable, and I cannot in good conscience participate in a celebratory occasion hosted by a country where people like myself are being systematically denied their basic right to live and love openly.

Perhaps, when and if circumstances improve, I’ll be free to make a different choice.

Until then.

Wentworth Miller

Member, HRC
Member, GLAAD
Member, The ManKind Project

Miller was the star of Prison Break which ran for four seasons (2005-2009) on Fox.