Person of the Year: Vladimir Putin

[William769]

Driving the governmental, religious, and popular disdain for gays and lesbians, the Russian president became the single greatest threat to LGBTs in the world in 2014.


“Imagine a boy who dreams of being a KGB officer
when everyone else wants to be a cosmonaut.”

This quote appears early in The Man Without a Face, Masha Gessen’s 2012 biography of Vladimir Putin. It’s as succinct and illuminating a characterization of the Russian president as you’re likely to find. The KGB, after all, perfected the thuggery, espionage, and aimless bureaucracy that are hallmarks of Putin’s regime. The agency’s crackdown on dissidents offered a blueprint for Putin’s own strongman excesses. That he aspired to such a career as a child tells us something useful about his psychopathology: This is a man hardwired to intimidate.

Nowhere is this tendency more apparent than in his crusade against LGBT Russians. Since winning a third term in 2012, Putin has become ever more autocratic, and his antigay ideology ever more extreme. In June 2013, he signed the infamous antigay propaganda bill that criminalizes the “distribution of information…aimed at the formation among minors of nontraditional sexual attitudes,” with nontraditional meaning anything other than heterosexual. Individual violators are fined anywhere between $120 and $150, while NGOs and corporations can incur fines as high as $30,000. International outrage flared in the months before the Sochi Olympics, in response to which Putin reassured the gay and lesbian community they had nothing to fear as long as they left Russia’s children in peace.

Such incendiary rhetoric is a staple of Putin’s political playbook. And in Russia, where the majority of media are state-owned, there’s little public pushback. Tanya Cooper, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, argues that the average Russian is unlikely to seek diverse viewpoints. “When politicians, celebrities, and respectable journalists in Russia tell you repeatedly, either on television or in print, that gay people are perverts, sodomites, and pedophiles, you just believe it,” she says.

According to Pew Research’s 2014 Global Attitudes Project, 72% of Russians think homosexuality is morally unacceptable. This hints at the increasing domination of the Russian Orthodox Church, which between 1991 and 2008 saw the number of adults calling themselves adherents increase from 31% to 72%. In July 2013, Patriarch Kirill I, leader of the church, deemed same-sex marriage “a very dangerous sign of the apocalypse,” a sentiment that appeals to Putin’s conservative base. Julie Dorf, a senior adviser at the Council for Global Equality, argues that Putin relies on the church to legitimize his rhetoric, and in turn, the church gets greater political access. “Without [Putin’s] personal agenda of using homophobia as a tool to keep himself buoyed domestically, I don’t think the church’s own homophobia would have risen to the same level,” Dorf says.

http://www.advocate.com/year-review/2014/11/06/advocates-person-year-vladimir-putin

[rurallib]

1. based on statements this year I know Republicans really admire this guy

with their mandate(?) Tuesday (that's the word the media is using over and over), Putin's stock is sure to go up in the US. Excellent choice I say

for the humor impaired

[William769]

3. I got it.

[Cha]

5. President Obama and the Democrats had a "mandate" but, the corporatemediawhore$$ would not

acknowledge it. They always had a majority of gop on their stupid shows and if it's Sunday it's the old always wrong, John McCain.

I do see where the President is going to be on Face the Nation this Sunday though. Chuckie Todd got high ratings from Obama so that's pretty much a guarantee.

Sorrry, I went off on "mandate".. what was the subject..oh, yeah.. what a homophobic, civil rights depressing creep putin is.

[RKP5637]

2. A tool for dictators. Find a group and punish them, get people to rally, and then pair that with

your real agenda. It's the SOS, now it's the gays.

[William769]

4. I wonder if he will get invited to speak in our DUMA?

[Cha]

6. "Being gay is natural, hating people for being gay is a 'lifestyle choice'."- John Fugelsang

That's my answer to Putin and the Russians who think like him.. oh yeah, and he's a monster.

Mahalo William

[William769]

10. You hit the nail right on the head Cha.

[Cha]

17. I saw it on

PeaceNikki's sig line!

[Cha]

7. KICK

[Behind the Aegis]

8. No surprise.

This also has apparently upset a few of his fans.

No surprise.

[William769]

11. The cheerleaders have been pretty silent lately.

There is only so much propaganda you can shove down someone's throat before people start saying "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!"

[greatauntoftriplets]

9. Great graphic!

Appropriate.

[William769]

13. Very.

[joeybee12]

12. I almost didn't recognize him with his shirt on...

KNR

He's scum.

[William769]

14. ROFLMGAO!

[Blue_Tires]

15. I imagine the Putin cheerleaders on DU will completely miss the sarcasm

[CJCRANE]

16. I think I'm probably regarded as a Putin cheerleader by some here

but I think they miss the point.

I don't agree with Putin's domestic policies at all.

But I also don't agree with the neocon policy of demonizing leaders of soveriegn countries in order to facilitate regime change.

In all examples where this has happened, we have only made life much, much worse for women, gay people and religious minorities.

Look at Iraq, Libya and Syria.

What did our policy of demonization and destabilization bring?

I saw a post a couple of days ago that was cheering on Saudi Arabia's policy of keeping oil prices low because it would crush the Russian economy and so get our own back on Putin.

Is that a rational reaction: to cheer on an even more repressive regime as it pushes the Russian people into hardship for the sake of one man?

I've never been to Russia and have no interest in going but I think we need to be careful with our vindictive emotions that seek to crush regimes and countries based on personal animosity without thinking of the consequences.

Having said that I agree with pushing back on repressive policies in all states and countries, wherever they are in America, Africa, Asia and Europe and not focusing on some while turning a blind eye to others.