Great, we don’t have to worry about purely local problems in Sochi between gay people and everyone else, because the mayor of Sochi says there are no gay people in Sochi. Whew! That’s one bullet dodged.
The mayor of Sochi, host of the Winter Olympics, has said there are no gay people in the city.
Anatoly Pakhomov said homosexuals were welcome at the Games – as long as they “respect Russian law” and “don’t impose their habits on others”.
When Putin said it was “as long as they don’t go after children.” Pakhomov’s formula seems potentially more restrictive. It depends what he means by “impose their habits on others.” I sort of kind of suspect he means just…”as long as they don’t be visibly unstraight in public.” That could be a difficult standard to meet.
Anatoly Pakhomov, a member of President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, told Panorama that gay people would be welcome at the Games.
“Our hospitality will be extended to everyone who respects the laws of the Russian Federation and doesn’t impose their habits on others”, he said.
But when asked whether gay people had to hide their sexuality in Sochi, the Mayor said: “No, we just say that it is your business, it’s your life. But it’s not accepted here in the Caucasus where we live. We do not have them in our city.”
When challenged, the mayor admitted that he was not certain there were no gay people in Sochi: “I am not sure, but I don’t bloody know them.”
Ahhhhhh that kind of there aren’t any – the “I don’t know any of the filthy vermin” kind of there aren’t any.
Politicians. We have some just like that here in the US.
OK. So, none of that Honecker-Brezhnev-necking in Sochi, then? That’s soo last week. Or century. Or empire. Right?
“We don’t mind black people as long as they don’t impose their blackness on others”
*spits*
*reads Mayor’s stupid message*
*laughs*
“No gays in Sochi”. Sure, Mayor. You just keep thinking that.
CaitieCat
If you ignore someone, even a group of someones, they will eventually go away… Is that not how it works?
Hey, I understand him.
There were no gay people in my small Southern Alberta hometown in the 60s and 70s either.
nodnod
Probably still aren’t.
nodnodnod
Come to think of it, there were none in the larger town where I went to high school, either.
nodnodnodnodnod
ouch
I hurt my neck.
There aren’t any gay people in Iran either, according to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Curious how gays tend not to exist in the places where people most feel the need to make laws to punish gays.
As mom’s work colleague, who’s about 40, says: you didn’t use to have gay people around before.
Appeared just a couple years ago. I guess they didn’t reach as far east as Russia yet.
Well that’s fine. However it should work in both directions. everybody knows that all Russians are lifelong drunkards. I think all the residents of Sochi should be required to sign a pledge that they won’t grab visitors off the street and force-feed them cheap vodka.
In the words of The Daily Show,
Someone on Tweeter shared this screenshot of an article about the mayor’s statement that “There are no gays in Sochi”, adorned with Google context ads for gay dating services and chatrooms… in Sochi.
Does he not have access to Google? Pulling only from English sources, you can find news stories about at least two gay clubs in Sochi – which apparently do pretty good business, with several hundred people visiting per night (about what you’d expect given a city with a population of ~350,000 and a fair amount of tourism).
I even found a couple of unconfirmed reports that the owners of one of the clubs recently met with Pakhomov. If those are correct, Pakhomov is simply lying rather than being in denial.
The link I gave above is to an interview with the owner of one of the two gay clubs in the city, who points out that it was a bit of a Key West back in the Soviet days, being a gay vacation destination in the subtropics (hell of a place to put the Winter Olympics, huh? Russia’s version of Florida?), a long way from the stuffy morals of Moskva for the (illegally) gay people of the USSR.
The link: http://queerussia.info/2013/09/29/2018/