Leno “ Suddenly Homosexuality is Against The Law” Where is the Outrage?

This posting is by Richard Socarides on the New Yorker:

“Something that shocked me about Russia—and I’m surprised this is not a huge story,” Jay Leno said to President Barack Obama on Tuesday night. The thing that shocked him there was a new law criminalizing what has been called “homosexual propaganda.” The law is intentionally vague in a way that may make it easy to enforce against a wide range of speech and activity. As Leno put it, “Suddenly, homosexuality is against the law.” He added, “I mean, why is not more of the world outraged at this?”

Obama answered by saying, in effect, that he was outraged: “I have no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them.” But there was also no mistaking that this is now becoming what Leno called a huge story.

Leno: Do you think it will affect the Olympics?

Obama: I think Putin and Russia have a big stake in making sure the Olympics work, and I think they understand that for most of the countries that participate in the Olympics, we wouldn’t tolerate gays and lesbians being treated differently. They’re athletes, they’re there to compete. And if Russia wants to uphold the Olympic spirit, then every judgment should be made on the track or in the swimming pool or on the balance beam, and people’s sexual orientation shouldn’t have anything to do with it.

(Applause.)

Leno: Good enough for me.

The next morning, the White House announced that President Obama would not meet with Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, as part of the G20 summit. There are other issues—Edward Snowden’s sojourn in Moscow among them. But Obama had put gay rights and the Winter Olympics, to be held next February in Sochi, Russia, on the agenda.

Putin’s war on gays will only become a more visible issue in the next six months. Russia has never been a welcoming place for gays and lesbians—being gay was a crime under the Soviets—but the Olympics are a big stage. Last week, when Vitaly L. Mutko, the Russian minister of sports, said that athletes at the Games could be subject to the new “homosexual propaganda” law, people got nervous. Mutko’s comments contradicted the off-the-record assurances that the International Olympic Committee had received, from unspecified high-ranking Russian officials, that athletes and Olympic visitors had nothing to worry about. The sports minister’s statements left an air of apprehension.

Among observers of Russian politics, Putin’s anti-gay crusade is seen primarily as an effort to curry favor with the Russian Orthodox Church and to distract the Russian middle class from crushing economic hardships and thuggish, authoritarian governance. But among human-rights activists (and a growing number of Olympic fans), his polices are seen as having a real, and terrible, effect on gay-rights crusaders in Russia, who have been harassed, arrested, and beaten.

But there is also no mistaking that there is a new political environment for gay rights in Russia, one in which Putin’s campaign is drawing substantial international attention. Gays and lesbians there are not as radically isolated as they were a decade ago. Chad Griffin, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay-rights organization in the U.S., recently called on NBC, the television sponsor of the Olympics—and Leno’s network—to initiate broad news coverage of the mistreatment of gays in Russia. There have also been calls for a boycott of the Games. (There is a grassroots boycott of Russian vodka being promoted in gay bars in major American cities.) But most athletes, including gay athletes, believe that a more significant political statement can be made by attending and participating in the games while protesting the law, and by showcasing broad support for gay rights in an arena rich with history and symbolism. Think of a gay Jesse Owens-type figure on a Olympic-medal platform, or of the raised-fist human-rights protest from medalists at the 1968 Summer Games.

Brian Ellner, a longtime gay-rights activist who is on the board of Athlete Ally, an organization that advocates for gays in sports, told me that “as with the marriage fights, our goal here is to build a broad coalition of relationships to support the L.G.B.T. community in Russia and L.G.B.T. athletes around the world. A boycott can alienate. But our goal is to stand with an army of Olympians and fans at the Games and before then, to push for the repeal of anti-gay laws in Russia and around the world.”

Not so long ago, a political protest of the Olympic Games based on anti-gay human-rights violations would have seemed like a fool’s errand. But in this mainstream moment for gay rights, it may prove to be potent. This is a time in which Pope Francis can ask, “Who am I to judge” gays and lesbians of good will, and have it largely well received among his followers—Putin is the one who is out of step. As the new leader of the Catholic Church acknowledged that gay priests were worthy of dignity, an old autocrat denied that dignity to his own citizens and, come the Olympics, to citizens of the world.

Obama pointed out to Leno that “what’s happening in Russia is not unique. When I travelled to Africa, there were some countries that are doing a lot of good things for their people, who we’re working with and helping on development issues, but in some cases have persecuted gays and lesbians.” He said that this “made for some uncomfortable press conferences,” but added that it was “one of the things that I think is very important for me to speak out on.” Even in this country, Evan Wolfson, the founder and head of Freedom to Marry, who has been at the forefront of the marriage-equality movement since its inception, recently told me, point blank, “This is still going to be hard, and it’s going to take a lot of work and money.”

Marriage has been a large part of this story, here and abroad. It’s been six weeks since the Supreme Court issued its two seminal gay-rights opinions, which reflected years of cultural and legal progress. The rulings have dramatically reshaped the political environment and the framework for the gay-equality debate, and have already inspired a host of new gay-rights court challenges. (The Georgetown law professor Nan Hunter has a discussion of several cases.) But so has sports—this was the year when Jason Collins became the first openly gay N.B.A. player. And 2014 will be the year when we find out how free gay and lesbian athletes are when they come to Sochi.

Richard Socarides is an attorney, a political strategist, a writer, and a longtime gay-rights advocate. He served as a White House special assistant and senior adviser during the Clinton Administration.