how should US respond to anti LBGT laws enacted in Russia

Russia is no friend of ours, and there's friction on many fronts. Both sides seem to be doing what's necessary (for now) to not be outright enemies. So, I don't expect us to do anything officially aside from some empty finger-wagging so as to not exacerbate the problem overmuch, but the two countries will come into conflict again sooner or later if we keep our trajectories. And, honestly, I don't want to be friends with them until they change their trajectory; I think late-Cold-War-era Soviet leadership was more enlightened and responsible than this crop. Civil rights for LGBT seems like small potatoes compared to their roles in international conflicts, energy markets, and so on.

 

Yeltsin was and Gorbachev proved to be at the end, but the coup by senior staff was a direct repudiation of that. Had they succeeded and imprisoned and/or executed Y or G, Soviet Russia would have remained and possibly been more antagonistic abroad.

 

Not sure if I missed it but surprised that nobody has brought up the influence of the Russian Orthodox church on government policies.

 

We should declare war on them in the name of freedom.

 

I just don't care. I don't care about homosexuality, nor do I have any interest in the entire gay rights movement, which I think is just a stupid issue all around. My interest in this spat between the United States and Russia has nothing to do with gay rights, and more with the inherent arrogance and proselytizing nature of Western liberalism, which was why I mentioned that passage from Marx when he talks about democrats - they just know that they represent the will of the people, and if it turns out that they don't, well that's just due to the evil nature of their enemies. That's not to say that Putin's law is necessarily a good thing, but like I said, there's a distinctive air of White Man's Burden that hangs around the West whenever they're talking about well, any country that's not western.

Absolutely not. By the time the coup was started, it was far too late. Gorbachev had spent the last several years knocking down the pillars on which Soviet legitimacy rested out of his idiotic belief, created by how badly he was out of touch with the Soviet people, that you could remove said pillars, replace them with completely new ones borrowed directly from the capitalist world, and still keep the same system. I've said it before. Gorbachev was no hero. His policies were the Soviet equivalent of Springtime for Hitler.

 

Russia is saying they will arrest gay athletes at the Olympics. A I the only one who has visions of the Navy SEALs going to rescue the men's figure skating team?

 

Too homoerotic for me, but it's a free country :grin:

 

Yukio Mishima faints.

 

Actually, being the world's leading democracy, we should be at the forefront of human rights, denounce the Russian policies towards the LBGT community, and do so regardless of what "Russians" think about the subject. It wouldn't be the first time the majority of a nation had it wrong. That happened here in the States during the early years of the Vietnam War, when a solid majority supported our involvement in the conflict. That opinion eventually changed. So will that of the Russians, given time, and leadership they won't get from Putin's oligarchy.

 

I thought their new laws only made it illegal to distribute any type of gay literature or propaganda ? What justification would there be to arrest a gay Olympian ?

 

You have to give koji credit for trying to lump in the modern Russian dictatorship in with the various indigenous peoples of centuries past under a badly done colonialism metaphor.

I actually think the inherent bigotry ingrained inPutinism would mean that Russians are more offended by the comparison then you or I

 

LMAO.

 

We should paint the space station rainbow colors.

 

Vitaly Milonov, a legislator in Russia, stated that gay and "pro-gay" athletes would be subject to arrest under new legislation that went into effect in June of this year.

 

Considering the Olympic Village has a reputation for being a giant orgy, what's Russia going to do, send the sex police in to enforce gender conformity?

 

If you read about the law and that they intend to enforce it, it sure sounds like that is their plan.

 

Hey maybe we can use it as an excuse to start a new cold war and dole out a few trillion more in juicy military industrial pork.

 

Right. Putin's oligarchy won't give Russia leadership. So we have to do it for them.

Like I said, Westerner liberals have a huge proselytizing tendency, complete with arrogance that their ideals, their human rights, are absolutely correct, in all times, all cultures, and all places. We've seen this over and over again ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall. From Western observers arrogantly giving Kosovo a constitution after a bunch of people who weren't from the country to Iraq to the current mess, when we refuse to admit that maybe Russia may want to rebuild a national legacy after the materialist attack that Communism inflicted upon it for 70 years.

Western liberalism combines the universal missionary sentiment of Christianity with a claim to represent the will of the people, so it's naturally uncomfortable admitting that different values may be authentic expressions of the will of the majority. Deep down, everybody must want the materialist salvation that its social vision offers. To suggest otherwise is to undermine one of its pillars; if salvation isn't for everybody that undermines the universalism that underpins its missionary drive, if salvation is something that must be rammed through against the wishes of most people that undermines its claim to populism (and bitter historical experience has made us rightly suspicious of the idea that we must force our own values on unwilling foreigners).

Sure. Let's judge countries by what a single legislator says. This definitely won't result in biased opinions like the US is literally a Christian theocracy at all.

 

Point me to any Russian government officials that say they aren't going to arrest gay athletes. I have found none. I don't know why you are so hell bent on defending their stance.