This was made necessary by a comment on a Sochi diary Friday:
Somehow I had missed the fact that the anti LGTB law was new. My bad.
Fine. Since July 23, there have been seventeen diaries about Russia, homophobic laws and the Sochi Olympics. Russia has rendered its LGBT population pariahs in the same way Germany and Austria rendered THEIR Jews pariahs in the 1930s. Know how many diaries had "Snowden" in the title over the same period of time? FORTY. THAT's why I and an increasing number of Kossacks are writing about this. I want to make sure every active participant in this site knows about the laws Russia has passed and about the increasingly dangerous (yes, I know what this word means) persecution of the LGBT community in Russia.
Our text today is an editorial piece that LZ Granderson, who writes for espn.com on LGBT issues, among other things, wrote for CNN on Friday. It's called "Haunting lesson of Nazi Olympics." If CZ isn't willing to mince words here, I won't be either. Here's the crux of the issue:
But in light of President Barack Obama's recent remarks on "The Tonight Show" denouncing Russia's new anti-gay laws, laws that have led to bloodshed in the streets, it is important that we remember Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller. They too were at those games. They too left a mark. You see, the day before they were scheduled to run in the 400-meter relay, their coach, Dean Cromwell, replaced them. They did not break any team rules nor were they disqualified for any violations. They were, however, Jewish, and this was Nazi Germany, which had adopted the Nuremberg laws limiting Jewish citizens' rights a year earlier. Apparently, Cromwell, along with leaders from the U.S. Olympic Committee, decided it would be best if Glickman and Stoller did not compete.
An Olympic Committee, I'm guessing with no Jews on it, sending a team to Germany and then reconsidering what would happen if a Jewish American won a medal.
Granderson reminds us of what we've already seen on Buzzfeed. He observes that 88 members of Congress have signed a letter to Secretary of State Kerry asking him to make sure our LGBT athletes are safe in Russia, and notes
That leaves 447 lawmakers we should be asking why they did not sign that letter,
and
here's the letter with its signers. Yes, the gay congressmen are at the top of the list.
He talks about the assaults the Russians are allowing to happen on gay men in Russia, which Horace Boothroyd III and I have diaried about. He's just winding up here, but these are issues that we overlook at our peril.
In talking about the 1936 Olympics, I do not equate what is happening in Russia to what happened to Jewish people during World War II. I just want to remind you that the Holocaust did not happen overnight. It was subtle.
You cannot have missed that the laws against gays in Russia are similar to the laws against Jews in Nazi Germany before anyone decided on the Final Solution.
If they differ, they differ in degree, not in kind. Granderson returns to Marty Glickman:
In one of his final interviews before passing away in 2001, Glickman told the San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage that there had been some talk of boycotting the 1936 Olympics because of Hitler, but no one foresaw what would happen to the Jews a short time later. "There is no way in the world that I would think of going to Nazi Germany," he said. "The Holocaust and those things around Nazi Germany which we all loathe weren't in existence in 1936."
So what about those 447 lawmakers?
Well, I'm Jewish, descended from two Russian Jewish grandfathers. One died when I was 3, but I knew and dearly loved the other one, my mother's father. I asked him when I was a teenager, since one of my friends in high school was studying Russian, if he could teach me some himself, and he told me that as soon as he got off the boat in New York he did everything he could to learn English and forget every Russian word he knew. I went to visit him in the hospital in I think 1978 when he was getting his last pacemaker (he was 89 and, well, ready to pass on), and he asked me about Jim, saying my parents didn't think he knew but he wasn't an idiot (and what was new about being gay anyway), and that all that mattered was that I was happy, and that if I was, he was too. So yes, you knew I was writing for THAT reason, but there's the other one.
Russia cannot be allowed to get away with these laws. Period. I might write more about the Congressional letter later.