Alexey Sorokin just doesn't get it. The head of Russia's 2018 soccer World Cup organizing committee this week said he thinks the country's new law prohibiting discussion or displays of "non-traditional" relationships, and bans pro-gay-rights symbols such as the rainbow flag, has been "largely misinterpreted" by the international community.
Speaking to the publication World Football Insider, he said the law "is designed against active propaganda of homosexuality, not against homosexuality itself. That is a big difference." He added, "The Olympics and World Cup are not a stage for various views not for Nazis, not for any other ways of life. It [the World Cup] should be about football and nothing else."
Um, right. So, depriving an individual or group of his/her/its right to express him/her/itself is not anti-anything, by Mr. Sorokin's definition. Nobody is persecuting anyone; they're merely telling them they can't promote their lifestyle with "propaganda" -and it's the mainstream (read: the Putin government) that gets to define what, exactly, that means. And now they're inviting the world's best winter sports athletes to come and compete here in 2014, and the world's best soccer players to do the same in 2018 - presumably while smiling and keeping their mouths shut about a clear violation of basic human rights.
Um, right.
This writer sympathizes with those who are calling for a boycott of the 2014 Olympics unless the law is rescinded. But we would hate to see the world go back to 1980 and 1984, when many countries boycotted consecutive Summer Olympics (in Moscow and Los Angeles) for political reasons. Neither boycott, it turned out, was particularly successful in achieving the desired outcome. Both merely wound up depriving athletes of their chance to compete and, in fact, exacerbated Cold War tensions.
Instead, we'd like to see the International Olympic Committee step out of its accustomed role of playing nice-nice with their "Olympic partners" in these sorts of touchy situations and step up the pressure on Russia to repeal the law. Failing that, we think athletes who care about human rights should unite and openly defy the law - perhaps by wearing rainbow ribbons at the Games' opening and closing ceremonies. There's some propaganda for you, Mr. Sorokin.
-David Burke
