Russian Head Of 2018 FIFA World Cup Compares Gays To Nazis

Alexey Sorokin, the head of FIFA‘s 2018 World Cup in Russia, recently defended his country’s new anti-gay laws by first suggesting without them gay people would be running around “naked,” and then by comparing gay people to “Nazis.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s new anti-gay laws, which ban “homosexual propaganda” — along with any public support of anything LGBT, like same-sex marriage or hand-holding by a same-sex couple — have come under considerable international criticism, especially with the 2014 Winter Olympics just six months away.

LOOK: Vladimir Putin Just Made It Illegal To Tell Kids Gay People Exist

But the 2018 World Cup (that’s soccer for those of us who aren’t sports fans,) is also slated to be held in Russia — actually, in eleven cities across the Russian Federation. FIFA is the international organizing committee for soccer, also known outside of America as football. And as The New Civil Rights Movement just reported, FIFA is already asking for “clarification and more details” about the anti-gay laws.

So many may be shocked and outraged to hear what the head of the FIFA World Cup, a Russian named Alexey Sorokin, had to say as he defended Putin’s laws.

“Sorokin, who is CEO of the Russia 2018 organising committee, told INSIDER the law ‘has been largely misinterpreted… it is designed against active propaganda of homosexuality, not against homosexuality itself. That is a big difference,'” World Football Insider reports:

“Would you like a World Cup where naked people are running around displaying their homosexuality? The answer to that is quite obvious,” he said.

“The Olympics and World Cup are not a stage for various views… not for Nazis, not for any other ways of life. It should be about football and nothing else.”

If that weren’t enough, Sorokin, who, as CEO of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia Local Organising Committee reports to Vladimir Putin, added:

“We suppose people come to participate or to watch and be part of it not to display their views. Private life should remain private.”

Because, apparently, Sorokin doesn’t hold his wife’s or girlfriend’s hand in public, has no photos of his family on his desk, and never mentions them to anyone — because “private life should remain private,” right?

 

Image: Alexey Sorokin via FIFA

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