Fry is overreacting.
LGBT people surely aren't particularly welcome in Russia, but that isn't because of the laws, and has more something to do with absence of any form of tolerance or education training about gays.
Stephen Fry: Putin is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews
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Re: Stephen Fry: Putin is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews
#12There was an olympics in Beijing . So holding the olympics committee to some democratic standard probably won't work.
Beijing sometimes romanized as Peking
Re: Stephen Fry: Putin is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews
#13I think for the first time in history, this article committed suicide under the terms of Godwin's law before it was even navigated to. More seriously, this is standard practice: label the enemy, even if it's wrong or you created the label yourself.
Invoking Godwin's law is a bit easy. Not every reference to Hitler deserves to be struck down by it.
What is happening in Russia is truly frightening and not necessarily that different in many respects to what happened in the 1930s: blame society's woes onto a minority that is slowly being deprived of its rights.
Re: Stephen Fry: Putin is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews
#14I know some people in Russia and recently in a discussion they brought out "gays" as people "they really don't like" - even if the discussion had absolutely nothing to do with gays. There could be some real merit to this warning.
There probably is merit to the warning, but the word "scapegoat" may be wrong. It means that your blaming the nation's problems on them. I haven't yet seen Putin blaming gays for economic hardships or crime. Misuse of overly strong words discredits the article.
But isn't it still "scapegoat" if you divert the public's attention from real issues to fight somebody in particular?
Re: Stephen Fry: Putin is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews
#15There was an olympics in Beijing . So holding the olympics committee to some democratic standard probably won't work.
Beijing sometimes romanized as Peking I didn't know that...
Sorry, it is written like that in my language and I didn't realize it's wrong in English; I corrected that
Re: Stephen Fry: Putin is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews
#16Fry is overreacting. LGBT people surely aren't particularly welcome in Russia, but that isn't because of the laws, and has more something to do with absence of any form of tolerance or education training about gays.
It's definitely cultural as well as a legal issue, but that doesn't change the fact that there are genuine homophobic laws as well. As to overreacting... I guess that's subjective, but I couldn't disagree more.
Re: Stephen Fry: Putin is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews
#17> An absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics of 2014 on Sochi is simply essential.
Wow, I couldn't disagree more on this point. One of the great things about the Olympics is that it's without politics [er... in this regard].
I don't believe that it's acceptable to say that places with different cultural values make unsuitable hosts. Human rights criticisms were also levelled at London, and even more at Beijing. In general, the Olympics (indirectly) does a lot to raise awareness of human rights and it's good that it is able to do this by spanning the breadth of the world's culture.
Hosting the Olympics in Sochi will allow individuals' achievements to be celebrated within Russia without the permission of politicians and without the stigma of prejudice.
I hope instead that gay participants will be encouraged to come out and raise awareness in the relative safety of the occasion: since Godwin's law has already been invoked, I would compare the situation to Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics.
Re: Stephen Fry: Putin is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews
#18At the risk of sounding insensitive (I'm not), I'd like to make a reminder that Hitler persecuted Jews and homosexuals alike...the Jews were a priority for him, but he had infrastructure dedicated to several groups. More importantly, because this article doesn't really cite much except for Stephen Fry's word, I'd like to here highlight that it's very much factual and well-documented, so as to remove doubt: http://en.…
What part of that comment did you think might sound insensitive - or was that a preemptive worry before you wrote the comment and you ended up not needing it? Either way, didn't feel insensitive at all.
Worth noting that Fry is definitely aware of what Hitler did to gays, but what he did to Jews is higher profile, most known and most understood, so making that comparison is the easiest one in a letter like this.
Re: Stephen Fry: Putin is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews
#19Jews, and gays, and gypsys, and Priests, and ....
Actually Hitler didn't like _alot_ of people.
Re: Stephen Fry: Putin is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Beijing sometimes romanized as Peking I didn't know that...
Sorry, it is written like that in my language and I didn't realize it's wrong in English; I corrected that
Both names have been correct at some point in history. In some areas, both are still used, depending on whom one asks and who is doing the naming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Postal_Map_Romanization
http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/11/chinese_trans...