Do Sponsors to The Olympics Have A Responsibility to Human/Gay Rights?

                                                           
Richard Socarides wrote on the New Yorker about one aspect of the olympics that really hasn’t been mentioned and that is the Sponsors without which there wouldn’t be much of any Olympics. As we understand about not having the Athletes paying the price by having the principle nations pull out, we also know that to do nothing is to endorse Putin’s decision.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama spoke for many Americans when he said that, despite being “offended” by the anti-gay policies of the Russian government, “I do not think it is appropriate to boycott the Olympics.” He was referring, of course, to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, now less than six months away. “We’ve got a bunch of Americans out there who are training hard who are doing everything they can to succeed,” he added.

The idea has taken hold that Russia’s human-rights violations, while worthy of condemnation, should not stand in the way of American athletes bringing home the gold.

But what of the premier corporate partners of the Olympics—some of the biggest American and international companies—that have paid millions for the privilege of associating themselves with the Games? For Sochi, they include Coca-Cola, Atos, Dow, General Electric, McDonald’s, Omega, Panasonic, Procter & Gamble, Samsung, and Visa. Their participation is certainly not required for American athletes to succeed. And compared with the participation of athletes, sponsorship by these corporations would seem to more directly benefit the Russian government.

Generally, corporate sponsors see the Olympic Games as a coveted opportunity to associate their brands with the good feelings generated by the Olympics. As the International Olympic Committee puts it in the section of its Web site devoted to the top ten corporate sponsors, “The Olympic Games are one of the most effective international marketing platforms in the world.” Each sponsor’s deal is different, and the costs are negotiated separately, but according to estimates in the press top sponsorships go for around a hundred million dollars each.

But when the Olympics turns into a site of political contention, it complicates matters, to say the least. Corporate brands may be tarnished because of their association with controversy—the opposite of what companies want from expensive sponsorships—or products may be subject to boycotts from gay people and others who care about human rights.

Many of the Olympic sponsors have internal policies barring discrimination against their own gay and lesbian employees. But Chris Geidner and Sapna Maheshwari of BuzzFeedfound last week that none of the ten marquee sponsors would speak forcefully, or in specific terms, about the gay-rights issue facing the Olympics, beyond relying on the I.O.C.’s assurances about the safety of participants and attendees. General Electric, perhaps the most aggressive of the group, told BuzzFeed, “We expect the I.O.C. to uphold human rights in every aspect of the Games.” Don’t these companies have an obligation to take a stand in keeping with their own policies? A major sponsorship would seem to earn them the right to some influence. They could exert some public pressure by more forcefully calling upon the Russian government to change its law, or they could go further by threatening to withdraw from the Games. As the Olympics approach, and if the controversy continues to escalate, as seems likely, withdrawing from sponsorship may look like a good option.

For sure, there are many other countries where gay people face even more government-sanctioned brutality and punishment for their sexual orientation than in Russia, as the gay-rights group All Out has chronicled. But none of these countries are hosting the Olympics, the most important sporting event in the world. Moreover, gay human-rights issues have become a much more important foreign-policy focus ever since former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave an International Human Rights Day speech in Geneva eighteen months ago in which she declared, “Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.”

In its latest statements about the emerging controversy, Russia seems to be suggesting that gay athletes and visitors to the Sochi games will not have their rights restricted as long as they don’t violate its new anti-propaganda law. That law makes it a crime to speak about “nontraditional” sexual orientations in a public setting or in the media if such expressions may be heard by young people, which, in the case of the high-profile Olympics, would seem to include pretty much any comment related to being gay.

It’s hard to believe that Russia’s position is going to pass muster with the I.O.C. or that athletes and spectators are going to abide by the law. In fact, it would appear that there will be mass protests against the law and symbolic expressions of opposition from athletes. How might the government respond? It’s unclear. Could there be mass arrests? Sure. Could the law be enforced against athletes who symbolically protest during the medal ceremonies? It certainly does not seem far-fetched.

All of this puts sponsors in a bind. McDonald’s has already seen one of its feel-good Olympics TV ads altered; someone spliced in scenes from a video of a young gay Russian teen being harassed by a mob and allegedly splattered with urine from a beer bottle.

NBC Universal, the television sponsor of the games, is also in a difficult position. It paid$4.4 billion to broadcast the Games from 2014 through 2020; it faces a huge financial risk if the Games collapse or are disrupted by political instability. If it is to remain credible, NBC Universal’s news organization, NBC News, has an obligation, at a minimum, to aggressively cover Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay campaign around the Games.

But would more forceful action by the Olympic sponsors even help the gays and lesbians who have been targeted in Russia by the new law? Or would Putin just be emboldened? Some suggest that he would relish a fight over gay rights with Western interests, especially one that might pit American corporations against the Russian Orthodox Church (a major proponent of the anti-gay campaign). That could be used to further whip up Russian nationalism, which many believe is the main purpose behind the new laws. It would seem to me, however, that those who care about human rights have an important and abiding duty to speak out against the law in every way possible. It is only by calling attention to violations of human rights that nations are held accountable (as Eric Sasson ably writes in a piece inThe New Republic arguing for a boycott of the Sochi Games).

Last year’s boycott of the chicken-sandwich chain Chick-fil-A for its financial support of anti-gay groups saw mixed results after conservatives rallied around the company and visited it in droves, at least according to news reports. But whatever the impact on the bottom line, the controversy did generate a lot of media coverage, and certainly the Olympics offer a much bigger media platform for gay-rights supporters then a take-out chain.

If Russia continues to arrest, harass, and stigmatize gay people, then human-rights activists will no doubt continue to protest, and the Olympics in Sochi could turn out to be one of the most politically explosive Games in history. Sadly, it may be asking too much to expect corporations to take action for the sake of human rights. But for the sake of keeping their brands from being tarnished by this ugliness? Now that’s a rationale that should get their attention.

Richard Socarides is an attorney, political strategist, writer, and longtime gay-rights advocate. He served as White House Special Assistant and Senior Adviser during the Clinton Administration. Follow him on Twitter @Socarides.

Photograph by Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty