Putin Warns Gays: Come To Sochi, But ‘Leave Kids Alone’ Or Else

var addthis_config = {“data_track_addressbar”:true};Putin speaking with young Olympic volunteers today

Vladimir Putin, less than three weeks before the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics, issued a warning to gay people planning on attending the Games. The President of Russia says gay people have nothing to worry about in Sochi, as long as they don’t sexually molest children.

The 61-year old former head of the Federal Security Service (the successor to the KGB) signed into law last June a sweeping anti-gay law that bans so-called “homosexual propaganda” and allows jail and deportation for foreigners who are found guilty.

The Washington Post reports that Putin today responded to a question from a volunteer who “asked him about Russia’s attitudes toward gays, a subject that has provoked worldwide controversy, and Putin offered what was apparently meant to be a reassuring answer for visitors to the Olympics.”

“One can feel calm and at ease,” he said. “Just leave kids alone, please.”

That phrasing — with its intimation that gays might prey on children — hardly seems the kind of guarantee sought by the United States and other Western governments and human rights activists.

Any assertion that gay people are pedophiles by nature is both false and offensive. Putin has fostered an environment in Russia that not only allows but seemingly encourages violent attacks on LGBT people — attacks including rape and murder.

The Post adds that “Putin attempted to put Russia on higher moral ground than other countries. Homosexuality is not a crime in Russia, as it was in the Soviet Union. Homosexuality was legalized in 1993. Police, he said, do not pluck gays off the street. In the United States, he asserted, some states impose criminal penalties for homosexual relations. Not Russia, he said.”

Of course, Putin’s assertion is wholly false. There are no valid laws that impose criminal penalties for homosexual relations in the United States.

 

Image via the Kremlin

Previously:

Watch: Russian Lawmaker Says Gay People ‘Rape Kids’

Russian Video: Gays Adopt Children To Rape Them

Homophobic Russian President Tells America ‘We Must Not Forget That God Created Us Equal’