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I don't think there is any in the so called "closet".
How many straight teens and adults have chosen suicide? It is a struggle not just among gay people.
Putin's anti-gay laws and Sochi Olympics
- Thread starter Big Deal
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I don't think there is any in the so called "closet".
How many straight teens and adults have chosen suicide? It is a struggle not just among gay people.
I should not have implied that everyone's immediate family (parents, siblings, offspring) has someone who is gay. There is a difference between a statistical occurrence and each actual group of people. But within everyone's larger family there's probably someone, and if you add the work environment and the circle of friends, the likelihood is greater. A woman I have known for years told me just this past week that her son had a longtime partner. She had never spoken of this matter with me before. I'm glad she felt ready to trust me.
Where I live, there is a higher incidence of gay people because it's an area where people feel comfortable being themselves, and so a lot of people emigrate here to escape a less open life in their hometowns. In my own family, when I look back with more understanding that I had at the time, I suspect that one older relative was probably a lesbian. It's possible that she dealt with the issue by having no relationships of any kind because it was not something she could deal with. (She never married.) It would have been a very hard life in those days, and she would probably have been cut off from a large part of her family.
Where I live, there is a higher incidence of gay people because it's an area where people feel comfortable being themselves, and so a lot of people emigrate here to escape a less open life in their hometowns. In my own family, when I look back with more understanding that I had at the time, I suspect that one older relative was probably a lesbian. It's possible that she dealt with the issue by having no relationships of any kind because it was not something she could deal with. (She never married.) It would have been a very hard life in those days, and she would probably have been cut off from a large part of her family.
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Straight people could end up not marrying too.
I did not mean the immediate families. I meant the extended families.
I did not mean the immediate families. I meant the extended families.
Then we're both on the same page, Bluebonnet. Thanks for clarifying.
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- Jul 26, 2003
Seems like there are other ways to boycott before the Olympics. Several bars and distributors are boycotting Russian vodka.
http://news.yahoo.com/vodka-boycott-u-spreads-concerns-over-gay-rights-002134847.html
http://news.yahoo.com/vodka-boycott-u-spreads-concerns-over-gay-rights-002134847.html
I don't drink, but if I did, I'd definitely do that. There's always Polish vodka, and even vodka from Finland. (Finlandia has that lovely bottle that looks like a bunch of icicles.) I bought a tiny bottle of vodka recently, for other uses. (Its high alcohol content makes it great for herbal tinctures and all kinds of cleaning tasks.) I just checked to see if I'd bought Russian, and of all places, mine comes from Guyana. Gee, Guyana and potatoes are not two things I associate with each other. But hey, if it means that I don't have to go out of this hemisphere for vodka, I'm cool.
I don't know what else we can boycott. I love Russian music, including opera, but I usually buy my CDs secondhand. Thank goodness we don't have to make the kinds of choices we'd have to make to boycott Chinese goods. We'd just have to stop buying everything including food. Seriously, though, I do hope we don't have to consider boycotting the Olympics. Besides the sacrifices it would ask our athletes to make, I'm not sure what the effect would be except that Russia would win many more medals. The Games would be like the Spartakiade, but with the five-ringed flag and the eternal flame.
Over on the other skating site, there's a long and impassioned discussion of this issue with many excellent points made. One gay poster is Russian. It personalizes the idea that real people will be put in real danger by the existence of this law.
I don't know what else we can boycott. I love Russian music, including opera, but I usually buy my CDs secondhand. Thank goodness we don't have to make the kinds of choices we'd have to make to boycott Chinese goods. We'd just have to stop buying everything including food. Seriously, though, I do hope we don't have to consider boycotting the Olympics. Besides the sacrifices it would ask our athletes to make, I'm not sure what the effect would be except that Russia would win many more medals. The Games would be like the Spartakiade, but with the five-ringed flag and the eternal flame.
Over on the other skating site, there's a long and impassioned discussion of this issue with many excellent points made. One gay poster is Russian. It personalizes the idea that real people will be put in real danger by the existence of this law.
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Lots of potatoes in South America. They basically invented the cultivation of the potato 8,000 years ago. There are 200 varieties of wild potato there.http://www.potato2008.org/en/potato/origins.html
Granted more on the heights of the Andes than in the jungles, but potatoes ship and store well.
There it is, then. The boycott of Russian vodka might put Guyanese vodka on the map. Which brings up an interesting commercial opportunity: vodka imported from Idaho or Maine. Before you laugh too much, remember that during World War II, when latex couldn't be imported from Asia to make rubber, scientists began working on ways to develop synthetic rubber and I think also used South America as a source for natural latex.
All joking aside, this vodka boycott is a creative way to let Russia know that people are paying attention, and it can start right now. I'll be following this story with interest.
All joking aside, this vodka boycott is a creative way to let Russia know that people are paying attention, and it can start right now. I'll be following this story with interest.
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- Feb 27, 2012
Updates:
Johnny Weir tweeted that ABC taped with him today for coverage of this topic on tonight's World News Tonight and tomorrow's Good Morning America.
(CNN also was/is interviewing him, I think?)
MOSCOW, August 1 (R-Sport) - The International Olympic Committee told R-Sport on Thursday that it was unmoved by comments from a Russian minister that athletes at next year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi would be subject to the country’s law banning so-called gay propaganda.
An athlete found to be “propagandizing” gay relationships in Sochi would be “held accountable,” Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko told R-Sport on Thursday.
That contradicted an IOC statement from last week in which the organization said it had “assurances from the highest level of government in Russia” that athletes and spectators would be exempt from the law, which has sparked calls from activists to boycott the Sochi Olympics.
The IOC said Thursday that it still had faith in those assurances.
“For the time being, we rest with the assurances we have … that this law will not affect either athletes, officials or spectators,” spokesman Andrew Mitchell told R-Sport in an emailed statement.
R-Sport understands that the source of the assurances cited by the IOC outranks Mutko.
Full story at:
An athlete found to be “propagandizing” gay relationships in Sochi would be “held accountable,” Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko told R-Sport on Thursday.
That contradicted an IOC statement from last week in which the organization said it had “assurances from the highest level of government in Russia” that athletes and spectators would be exempt from the law, which has sparked calls from activists to boycott the Sochi Olympics.
The IOC said Thursday that it still had faith in those assurances.
“For the time being, we rest with the assurances we have … that this law will not affect either athletes, officials or spectators,” spokesman Andrew Mitchell told R-Sport in an emailed statement.
R-Sport understands that the source of the assurances cited by the IOC outranks Mutko.
Full story at:
Johnny Weir tweeted that ABC taped with him today for coverage of this topic on tonight's World News Tonight and tomorrow's Good Morning America.
(CNN also was/is interviewing him, I think?)
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Johnny would be the poster boy for this for sure. Too bad they generally do not pay for interviews.
Did I not read somewhere that one of the rationales for the law is that gay people aren't helping to increase the birth rate in Russia, a rate that has been dropping perilously in recent years? I wonder how Russia's lawmakers explain the fact that the birth rate is rising in so many countries where gay people have the full rights that any citizen deserves.
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There's a boutique vodka/gin distillery in Freeport Maine. Cold River Vodka http://www.mainedistilleries.com/cold-river-classic-vodka.html
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I'm sure gay marriage didn't help birth rate.
I do not find it laughable to think that gay couples have contributed to the birth rate in the countries to which Olympia referred.
Plenty of gay couples want to become parents and find a way to do so.
Sometimes they arrange for a surrogate mother to bear the couple's child. Sometimes a lesbian partner/spouse herself becomes pregnant.
(Sorry, I do not have any stats at my fingertips.)
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This is such an insignificant number in the contribution on higher birth rate. I find it truly laughable. while other much much more important and in some way deciding factors are ignored just because some people are trying to relate every single good thing to gay rights. The fact is that America's Hispanic populations are sharply on the rising. Ironically, Hispanic population has very low rate, I won't say they have none, on gay marriage compare with the dominant white population.
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How do you know they don't have laws against those things you listed? Just because no one highlighted them for you, doesn't mean that they don't have.
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I think the issue was not whether there are laws, but whether people get up in arms to the same extent they do about gay and Lesbian people getting married, and in Russia, about whether gay and Lesbian people can even exist.
Here in the US those who condone & shield priest child rapists, not to mention football coach child rapists, are sometimes the same people angsting about gay marriage. There's quite a disconnect.
Here in the US those who condone & shield priest child rapists, not to mention football coach child rapists, are sometimes the same people angsting about gay marriage. There's quite a disconnect.
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I mean 80-88% disapproval for homosexual behavior in Russia
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