London rally against Russia’s anti-gay Olympics 5th Feb 2014

[marshlander]

Abjure all Coca Cola and Macdonalds products for the next few weeks. It might make some of the sponsors sit up and notice.

[East]

I cannot even watch the Olympics this time and it will be the first time I missed them in my lifetime..I am usually glued to the TV all of my waking hours.

There has been a lot of discussion on this topic on another gay website I belong to and there is this one Russian gay man who lives in Russia who repeatedly claims all the "interference" is hurting the GLBT people in Russia. Are their any Russian GLBT people here? If so...do you agree or have any other insight?

[Woollyhats]

I posted elsewhere that I feel that openly LGB athletes should wear a rainbow ribbon/flag/whatever on their clothing.

These guys have been training for long and hard to get to where they are and it would be unfair to ask them to boycott. They may also have commitments to sponsors and the like who could also do something to protest about the treatment of LGBT people in Russia.

We could start by finding out who sponsors LGB athletes in the Winter Olympics and contact them to raise awareness of the problem and ask them to perhaps place a rainbow flag on their company adverts.

Money talks!

They would likely be imprisoned briefly and fined before being deported if they did that. I don't think you understand that Russia has banned "homosexual propaganda", which broadly bans people from being openly gay, most scientific research on homosexuality (if it reaches kids you're toast), and any kind of public display or educational teaching on the matter.

Predictably, homophobic attacks IN PUBLIC of homosexuals are becoming more common, I was greeted with a wonderful story on the matter this morning (as usual I just skipped it, but I can go crawling through my feed for it if you'd like to read it/watch the video).

[EvenOlderButWiser]

I don't believe the Olympic Committee allows any such "badges of honour" on the outfits, and wearing an unauthorised badge, or displaying any sign of political type significance can result in an athlete being immediately banned and being sent home.

Unfortunately.

ObW
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[Bluelight]

It's just too bad that this year's games will have such a gloomy shadow lingering over it. I've always looked forward to the Olympics, but this time it's just a reminder that the world doesn't care enough about the LGBT community to put a stop to such injustice. If any other minority were being repressed, say an ethnic or religious group, things would have turned out much differently.

On the other hand, this escalated so quickly that the only alternative option would be to stop the games, which would not be fair to the athletes be them gay or straight, but still, this is such a shame.

[marshlander]

There were a few hundred of us at the rally tonight across Whitehall from Downing Street in London. A succession of speakers, including Chris Bryant MP, Peter Tatchell, Baroness Barker, Marie from All Out, Paul O'Grady. A bit of chanting, lots of other noise, plenty of banner waving, an unreliable p.a. system.

Nineteen events of this kind are known to have been taking place around the globe. Towards the end of the evening Peter and Marie trotted off to Macdonalds to hand them a copy of the petition with over 130,000 signatures.

Long, cold walk back to the station to get the train home because the tubes were on strike. Got home in time to see Channel 4's Dipatches documentary, "Hunted", about vigilante gangs entrapping glbt people in Russia. If you can access it I recommend you take a look http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/4od