Overwritten.net
Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: gpw11 on Tuesday, July 30, 2013, 04:12:49 PM
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I know you totally hate the gays, but you may want to reign in that dude saying you're going to arrest gay athletes at the Olympics.
Or don't. An IOC shitstorm leading to Vancouver 2014 would be AWESOME
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Russia is a weird place. So much potential to actually be a real first world country and it is squandered by leadership that always seems to be hell bent on oppression.
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lolwut?
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Russia (and the Soviet Union before it) has always been very homophobic. Russians have become a lot more religious in recent years so these kind of laws are welcomed by the vast majority of the population. In addition, Putin is using this as a way to show that his administration is there to protect the Russian culture from the corruption by the West. Basically any conflict with the West (for example the Snowden situation) empowers Putin even more.
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OK, thanks. I did a quick search after the topic sprang up, and I got nothing. (Not that I dug into it with any sort of determination.)
The affluent Western democracies have gotten very accepting of homosexuality, and even transsexuality to some degree. But this is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it's isolated to a fairly small number of "enlightened" countries. Such deviations from the hetero norm have been frowned upon as a general rule. Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions reject it outright. The "closet" has been pretty much a practical necessity in the past, and still is in many places. I think we are so used to this acceptance here now that we don't realize just how much it offends the sensibilities of more traditionalist or oppressive societies.
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This reddit post (http://www.reddit.com/r/russia/comments/1jpagi/whats_up_with_the_whole_gay_thing/cbh4hju?context=1) provides a bit more background on the situation in Russia.