var addthis_config = {“data_track_addressbar”:true};Vladimir Putin speaking to Olympic volunteers on Friday
From the Sochi Olympic Games village, Vladimir Putin gave a lengthy interview to reporters from around the world this week. His goal: to ensure that the 2014 Winter Olympics — the culmination of his entire political career — go off without a hitch.
But Putin is taking the wrong road to the Olympics.
The Russian President is trying to get as much of the world to agree with him that homosexuality is immoral, wrong, evil, related to pedophilia, and just plain bad for society.
He won’t be successful — attitudes are moving far faster than the 61-year old former KGB agent and head of the FSB is able to.
During his interview with the press, Putin claimed that his anti-gay law “does not hurt anyone,†and that gay people, who he refers to as “individuals of non-traditional orientation,” cannot “feel like second-rate humans in this country because they are not discriminated against in any way.”
Which of course is a lie.
In that same interview, Putin also used language at which anyone with a smattering of knowledge of early 20th century history would cringe.
Russia, its president says, must “clean-up” or “cleanse” itself of gay people in order to protect its future.
Does that sound vaguely familiar?
Did another head of state use language related to “cleansing” to protect its future?
Shocking.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Putin talked about the “completely horrifying…demographic crisis” — a negative birth rate, where more people were dying than being born — the Russian Federation (RF) faced from 2002-2004.
“It seemed that the demographic pit would be bottomless and we would continue to fall into it forever. That is when we devised and adopted a program to support demography, to support the birthrate in the RF.”
“This year, for the first time, the number of those born has exceeded the number of the departed in Russia,” Putin bragged. “We have achieved a specific positive result. If anyone wants to choose cemeteries as the focus of development they should feel free to do so, but we have different objectives.”
“We want the Russian people and other peoples residing in the Russian Federation to develop and to have a future history. Everything that stands in our way in this regard, we must clean up but do so in modern and humane ways, without offending anyone and without turning anyone into second rate humans. It seems to me that the law that we have adopted does not hurt anyone.” [Bolding ours]
So, Russia, Putin says, should clean itself of gay people, because they aren’t reproducing? If gay people promise to make babies — which they can — will he “allow” them to stay in Russia?
Of course not. Putin and other lawmakers are trying to take away all children — even their own biological ones — being raised by same-sex couples or single LGBT people.
And, “does not hurt anyone”? How about all the LGBT people, their friends, and their families, in Russia?
Putin merely uttering the phrase “clean up” gives license to all the anti-gay neo-Nazi skinhead thugs and gangsters who have already made international news for their raping and murdering of LGBT people. Rapes and murders that go unacknowledged and unprosecuted by Russian authorities.
If Vladimir Putin continues down this same path, he will find the world’s nations not only boycotting the Olympics, but shutting Russia out of the international economy forever.
Â