It's very obviously written for the purposes of advocacy, despite protestations that it's not. The defense of this law seems to be:

1) It's not that bad. It doesn't target the LGBT community, it just bans any sort of public acknowledgement of a class of people that just happens to include LGBT folks.

2) The media has blown this way out of proportion by saying what the law only implies. Also by not mentioning that the law was enacted to protect the children. Why don't they mention the children?

3) Even if the law is that bad, it hasn't been enforced much yet.

4) Even if the law is bad, those guys over there are just as bed.

Oh yeah, definitely want to consider both sides of this argument.

Just out of curiosity, boyter. When you refer to "both sides", how would you sum up the other side in one sentence? "It's not that bad" is not, in fact, a defense of anything.

"With all that in mind, we can conclude that the only accurate, fact-based, logical answer to the question is YES"

Wow, just wow.

This guy is a nutjob. He argues with a straight face that the Russian law isn't targeting the LGBT community, just non-traditional sexual relationships. He's either a liar about his long involvement in the LGBT community or he's learned absolutely nothing from it, as it's classic couching of terms as cover.

He even brings up the (unenforceable) anti-sodomy laws in US states, discussing how the majority of them are actually written to outlaw sodomy (non-vaginal intercourse) between any two people, not just same-sex couples, but they were used as tools to specifically target homosexual long after they were no longer (or rarely) enforced against heterosexual people. And yet he can't seem to connect the dots.

In any case, this goes from infuriating to fucking stupid pretty quickly. Check out the pages culminating in the conclusion I quoted above on page 70.

One sentence?

"The law in its current form is an improvement over what existed before."

BTW I shouldn't have used the phrase "both sides". What I mean is we should not get caught up in the media's interpretation of the law. My mistake there and sorry for the confusion.

My referring to the "not that bad" is to way its being presented by the media.

I can see how advocating for equality can be listed as a crime based on what's listed in the law. It's interesting that the word "propaganda" is used which leaves a fair amount of room for interpretation. Point 3 is the sore point it seems, although I can see why its in there as you would not want to equate "child-adult" relationships which this would prevent. It all hangs on the word "nontraditional".

That Russia has a reasonable political platform regarding its LGBT citizens? I am not sure that it is possible to 'blow out of proportion' what is most certainly a human rights issue. This was your own assertion, not that of the paper's.

The topic was the Google Doodle showing support for LGBT people and your first impulse is to imply that the situation in Russia is in fact a non-issue.

That is why you were downvoted, man.

Please, please, please read the linked white paper. It is well researched, well written and provides citations and sources to its conclusions. It is also written by a lawyer who identifies themselves as part of the LGBT community.

If nothing else, scroll down and read the translation of the Russian Federation law in there (the only good version I could find) and really think on what it means to the individual.

You were bemoaning being downvoted, and I explained why.

I was commenting on the context which you provided inside of your original comment. If you actually don't care or don't wonder why such a comment would be downvoted, then disregard my post(s).

I expected to be down-voted. I was also hoping that there would be enough people around with an objective point of view to read the paper and provide solid cited counter arguments.

I hold no stake in this. I am neither Russian or part of the LGBT community. I am interested in human rights, and I want equal opportunities for all regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender or otherwise. Torch and pitchfork attacks are not the way to achieve this.

Are you saying that this position can simply be disregarded out of hand? That strikes me as disrespectful and self-important. If nothing else it is non-conducive to any actual discussion on the matter - unless all you want is an echo chamber to reaffirm your preexisting positions on the matter.

> The topic was the Google Doodle showing support for LGBT people

Specifically in relation to the LGBT issues surrounding the Olympics, i.e., Russia's "anti-gay" laws. The Russian laws are very much a part of this topic. You're being disingenuous.

The commenter called it "The LGBT Russia thing" and if that does not aptly sum up how trivial s/he perceives the topic to be, I don't know what does. "That human rights violation thing". Sorry, it doesn't fly with me.

I am not saying Russian laws are not a part of the topic. What I am saying is that characterizing the topic as being "overblown" by citing that paper is absolutely ludicrous.

EDIT: Wanted to add in this: How do you have 'rational discourse' when one side of the discussion is demonstrably pursuing nothing less than a human rights violation? It is like saying the Catholic church's sex scandal was 'overblown', or slavery, or any other human rights topic you can imagine. Where is the rational discourse there? How can "human rights violations" ever be an "overblown" topic?

It's written by somebody who claims to be a journalist and managing editor yet has basically zero online presence in bylines or anything that I can find. Nor does he provide any contact information (apart from being from Chicago, which, good for him, I guess?). That makes very little sense.

In the US at large, LGBT rights and support for them has been growing, imperfectly and inconsistently, but growing. In Russia, it seems that there's been a backlash, and Putin and company are stirring up public sentiment against LGBT people. I'll take the word of Russians that things are actively getting worse:

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201402/being-gay-...

Fucking hell, the countries are even the same here...

My comment references a Russian propaganda technique of brushing off human rights violation accusations by saying "Yeah well, the US is shitty", as though that excuses them. I suppose Yandex could in theory be used to distribute this form of propaganda, I don't really know much about them.

But if you care about facts on the ground—what people do, not what they say—then the US is worse than Russia.

I have no idea about any of the facts, but that's what I took to be what he was saying.

but thanks for linking that, seems to do a better job of providing better context of the LGBT situation in Russia.

Right.

Give me a goddamned break.

Right.

Give me a break.

Seriously, without getting snarky, how about you actually read the whitepaper. The person who wrote it is a lawyer and member of the LGBT community.

You might want to do some reading up - starting with this 5 series VICE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ_aSl3ktjg

I am not saying there are not problems. I am saying that the media coverage of it is overblown, and because of that any rational thought or discussion about it is impossible. I provided a link to a document which as I pointed out elsewhere is well written, researched, provides citations and has some reasonable conclusions.

I understand it is hard to remove emotion from this sort of topics, in much the same way that discussions on climate change rapidly spiral out of control.

I had hoped that HN was beyond being a vote brigade and that posting it would produce some reasonable discussion on the topic.

> Public actions designed to promote pedophilia, sexual relations with minors,pederasty, lesbianism and bisexuality shall be prohibited.

You see what is missing? Gay. Lesbian? Bisexual? In there. Gay not. Why? The subtext is: it's implied by either pedophilia or pederasty. Yes, those are techniques you find also among American conservatives fighting gay rights. But you know what? Those images and stereotypes can be found all over the world, for centuries at least. But making laws that turn those stereotypes official? Yeah, that's a problem. Not the people being convicted by those laws. The precedence such laws create.

I agree that there is lots of legislation which uses anti-pedophilia as a way of passing though "Won't somebody please think of the children!" works, and that's why it is used. I disagree with it of course, but yes I am aware of it.

Wait you are saying that by deliberately excluding "gay" then its implied? Sorry but that's a bit of a stretch which I disagree with.

Look, as far as I can tell this law can be boiled down to "We don't want people to force non-traditional marriage beliefs on minors". The specifics of it have issues. I can see how advocating for equality can be listed as a crime based on what's listed there though. Its interesting that the word "propaganda" is used which leaves a fair amount of room for interpretation. Point 3 is the sore point it seems, although I can see why its in there as you would not want to equate child-adult relationships which this would prevent. It all hangs on the word "nontraditional" and "propaganda".

Read up http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201402/being-gay-...

First, this white paper is horribly written in comparison to a real research paper or academic report. It seems to be written for the audience of a site such as Infowars, which, not surprisingly, is one of the main sites that have promoted this white paper.[1]

Second, I was mostly interested in the author's comparison of the rates of hate crimes committed against LGBT people in Russia and the US. Not surprisingly, the author simply compares rates reported by the SOVA Center and the FBI. Anyone who has studied criminology for five minutes knows that you can't adequately compare the levels of crime in different areas this way. The American Society of Criminology, the largest criminological association in the world, has stated this numerous times in their publications, including their policy statements[2] (which strongly recommend against using Unified Crime Reports (UCRs) to compare levels of crime in different cities that are located IN THE SAME COUNTRY).

> It is also written by a lawyer who identifies themselves as part of the LGBT community.

Yes, and Bjørn Lomborg is a lifelong environmentalist, which I also learned at Infowars.

The only mention of Brian M. Heiss, the author of the white paper, anywhere on the Internet[3][4] is this white paper. Please direct me to this author, which should be easy since he's apparently your favorite source regarding this issue. I would never cite a source whose existence I couldn't prove.

> Letting the media tell you what to think

Are Amnesty International[5] and Human Rights Watch[6] "the media"?

[1] http://www.infowars.com/the-truth-about-russias-anti-gay-law...

[2] http://www.asc41.com/policies/policyPositions.html

[3] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Brian+M+Heiss%22

[4] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Brian+Heiss%22+%22lawyer%...

[5] http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/annual-report-rus...

[6] http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/02/03/russia-sochi-games-highli...