I have been a fan of the Olympic Games since I was a child. I love sport, and the dreams and drama exemplified by Olympic competition. I have watched at least some of every Olympiad on television or in person since 1980. In anticipation of the next Games, I have been watching the news out of Russia and giving great thought to how I feel and what I think should be done. It has become clear to me that the only choice is a boycott of Russia, of the Olympic Games, and of the Olympics’ TOP (The Olympic Programme) sponsors.
I have been a fan of the Olympic Games since I was a child. I love sport, and the dreams and drama exemplified by Olympic competition. I have watched at least some of every Olympiad on television or in person since 1980. In anticipation of the next Games, I have been watching the news out of Russia and giving great thought to how I feel and what I think should be done. It has become clear to me that the only choice is a boycott of Russia, of the Olympic Games, and of the Olympics’ TOP (The Olympic Programme) sponsors.
For those who have not seen the news, the reason that Russia’s hosting of the Winter Olympics in 2014 is controversial is because of that country’s recent lurch to the far right in its treatment of LGBT citizens and visitors. Russia’s new “anti-propaganda” law purports to prevent minors from being exposed to information “directed at forming nontraditional sexual setup” or which can created a “distorted understanding” that gay and straight relationships are “socially equivalent”. The law comes with heavy fines for citizens, and arrest and deportation for foreigners. In its application, this law is being used to prohibit and criminalize any positive portrayals of LGBT citizens, since children could possibly view any public protest or demonstration. The law was used to break up a gay pride parade in St. Petersburg, while Moscow has banned gay pride rallies through May of 2112. Yes, twenty-one twelve.
However, it is not the law itself that is the real danger – it is the climate of hatred that the law and President Vladimir Putin have allowed to flourish throughout the country in its aftermath. The law simply provides the blanket of protection for gangs to use in imposing vigilante justice throughout the country. Violent gangs, some affiliated with nationalist, Nazi, or skinhead causes, have sprouted up in over 150 cities across the country. They are using social media to lure young teen boys – gay or just suspected of being gay – and then beating them, humiliating them, filming the violence and posting it on the Internet. An Uzbek teen is already dead from torture, and nothing has been done; nothing can be done. The local and national governments refuse to act, mainly because these gangs are doing their dirty work for them – scapegoating gays to distract the country from creeping dictatorship. Stephen Fry is right - this is Germany in the 1930s all over again.
If you just scratch the surface of Google’s news search, you will find story after story of torture after torture from city after city all across Russia. When criminals can beat, torture, and murder other citizens, and then post videos of their crimes with their own faces included and yet face no justice, then justice has been defeated and no one is safe. Suspicion of homosexuality is Russia’s “stand your ground” law – a license to kill with impunity. This is the nation that the International Olympic Committee believes is best suited to exemplify the Olympic spirit in 2014. And with the world’s attention on Russia, now is the time to act against this violence and hatred.
Which brings us to the allegedly thorny issue of mingling politics with the Olympics. The last round of actual Olympic boycotts happened in 1980 and 1984 during the Cold War, with the United States objecting to Soviet involvement in Afghanistan (65 nations not participating in 1980), and the USSR leading a retaliation boycott of 14 nations in 1984. These were actually geopolitical moves, so a comparison of a boycott of the Sochi Games for human rights reasons is not an apt one. Soliders’ lives may have been at stake in the 1980 decision over Afghanistan, and Cold War politics toyed with the games in 1980 and 1984. Now, innocent civilians are dying at the hands of their countrymen because of who they are – and because of the type of man their leader is not.
Numerous athletes, including several out gay athletes, have pleaded with the public to oppose boycott effort for the Sochi Games. And I am calling them out by name. Speed skater Blake Skjellerup. Diver Tom Daley. Figure skater Johnny Weir. You disgust me. How misguidedly selfish you are to seek your own athletic glory over the human rights of millions? None of you is Tommie Smith, and Russia won’t care if you wear a rainbow flag on the podium - if you get there. The Olympics will leave town, and Russians will still torture and kill LGBT comrades. Those who say that Olympic boycotts punish the athletes are missing the point entirely.
Olympic athletes train to play a game or a sport or perform an athletic or artistic endeavor, mostly from a very early age. Very few are professional athletes in their sports, and nearly all of them compete for a love of their discipline, their fellow athletes, and their competition. All true. Now let me completely diminish all of that. It’s still just a sport, just a game, just an ice dance. What does your few minutes of performance – and if you are lucky, millions of dollars in endorsements – mean in the face of the tragedy suffered by LGBT Russians today? Your athletic performance is more important than their lives? There is no greater embodiment of selfishness than that.
For those who say that the Games cannot be moved, that it is too late – you forget that the IOC can do anything it wants. Don’t you remember the last time the IOC changed the dates of the Winter Olympics? Why, that was only back in 1994 in Lillehammer, Norway, when the IOC conducted a winter games just two years after the last one. The goal of this change was to move the Winter and Summer Games to different Olympiads instead of being held in the same year. If – and there never was a bigger if in the history of the Olympics – the IOC wanted to do something about this, all they need to do is postpone these Games until 2016, move them to Vancouver, and then continue with the 2018 Games in the Republic of Korea. It is completely possible. Athletes would have to wait two years but not miss an Olympiad, and the Games continue as scheduled after that. Best of all, Russia is not rewarded for its horrific assault on LGBT citizens.
The IOC will not do this. The IOC will not do this because of money and political power. It needs the former and lacks the latter. So I’ll be sitting out this Olympiad for the first time in 35 years. And I will be avoiding the TOP sponsors – the biggest brands names and largest cash cows for the Olympics. These are the companies that need to be pressured domestically – and hard – to stand up against Russian bigotry. If the companies won’t speak out against Russia, I’ll speak out against the companies. That means you, Coca-Cola. And you, McDonald’s. And you, Panasonic. And the rest of you: Atos, Dow, General Electric, Omega, Proctor and Gamble, Visa, and Samsung. And NBC.
It’s time to get real about this. Stop pouring out Russian vodka and start laying it on the line against these companies that have provided over half a billion dollars in sponsorship to the IOC. Let them know that this is money poorly spent, and money that will not be recovered via sales to the LGBT community in this country. Most of all, don’t be like the Olympic athletes and apologists who can only think of how the athletes will be hurt by missing their chance to compete. Think of the teenage boy somewhere in Russia who is being actually hurt – tortured, humiliated, possibly even killed – because of who he is or who his assailants assume him to be. That’s the real fight here, and it is a fight worth having. Fight the real enemy – hatred.