Winter Olympics cast spotlight on bigotry
The staging of the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Black Sea city of Sochi has cast a spotlight on anti-gay bigotry in Russia — in its “legal” and “popular” forms. In June 2013, the Russian Duma (Parliament) unanimously voted through an amendment to Article 5 of the Federal Law on the “Defence of Children from Information Causing Harm to Their Health and Development”. The stated purpose of the amendment is to protect children from “information which propagandises a denial of traditional family values and non-traditional sexual relations.” Non-traditional relations are defined as “relations not...