Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyPosts Tagged As: Sochi
February 7th, 2014
The Winter Olympics in Sochi officially start today and a lot of digital ink has been spilled in the last six months about Russia’s “gay propaganda” law. Here is a brief recap of some of the highlights:
Box Turtle Bulletin’s coverage, in one convenient link.
Jeff Sharlet of Rolling Stone, GQ, et al, went to Russia and wrote the definitive guide on how bad it really is on the ground for LGBT people — marauding klan-like groups, gay people with children living in fear, jobs being lost, and, most interesting to me, some links between anti-gay groups in the US and the violence in Russia, all here: Inside the Iron Closet: What It’s Like to Be Gay in Putin’s Russia
All the way back in August, the NYT wrote this report on the violence already occurring within two months of the passage of the “gay propaganda” law: Gays in Russia Find No Haven, Despite Support From the West
Scott Long’s dissection of Truths behind the gay torture images from Russia is a good balance to some of the rumors and unsubstantiated stories that have been and will continue to pour out of Russia.
The NYT in its update on Billie Jean King also links to reports on how much the Obama administration has gone out of its way to put LGBT people front and center in Sochi:Billie Jean King Won’t Join U.S. Olympic Delegation – neither Obama or Biden will be in attendance.
Remember the Stoli boycott? The Chicago Phoenix does a recap here including the news that the bar Sidetrack is ending its boycott but will donating a portion of sales to a Russian pro-LGBT fund.
Julia Ioffe, Russian American journalist for The New Republic, writes here of all the schadenfreude over the many problems in Sochi — already, the Twitter account @SochiProblems has more followers than the official Sochi Winter Olympics account. In case you wanted to know, “schadenfreude” in Russian is “злорадство/ zloradstvo” and I don’t think any of us feel very guilty about it.
On that subject, here are some people to follow on Twitter for Sochi/LGBT updates:
Leonid Ragozin
MaxSeddon
Tweets in Russian (& some English):
Masha Gessen, lesbian freelance writer for the NYT et al.
Nikolai Alekseyev who has, it must be said, doggedly put on Pride protests for over 5 years now in Moscow and, apparently, sued the Russian state multiple times over its mistreatment of LGBT people. He’s also a Russian nationalist with a history of anti-semitism.
Last but not least, Box Turtle also has a new Twitter account, follow here.
*Update: already, 4 LGBT activists in St. Petersburg, including a pregant woman, have been arrested. #CheerstoSochi . . .
Featured Reports
In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.
When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.
In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.
On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
At last, the truth can now be told.
Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!
And don‘t miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.
Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.
Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.
Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.
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