# To Russia with love. President sends openly gay athletes to Sochi. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 18, 2013, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-russia-with-love-president-sends-openly-gay-athletes-to-sochi/676645 "2013-12-18T14:40:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-russia-with-love-president-sends-openly-gay-athletes-to-sochi/676645/101 "2013-12-31T12:14:02Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > Sounds like Russia is getting seriously dissed. > > Its this sort of diplomatic high schoolness that I find entertaining. That “oh, no, the U.S. is sending a FORMER CABINET SECRETARY and we don’t get the German or French Presidents coming to our party” is meaningful on the world stage. . I wouldn’t know for the German president, but I don’t remember French presidents typically attending Olympic games, anyway. So it makes even less sense. ---
**Author:** ![burunduk34](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3ec8ea/32.png) [@burunduk34](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burunduk34)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-russia-with-love-president-sends-openly-gay-athletes-to-sochi/676645/102 "2013-12-31T12:40:57Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Let’s skip to the endgame, **burunduk34** : is this about recreational (if lame) Obama-bashing, your personal dislike of gays, or both? I’ll be happy to skip to the endgame, **Marley23**. Is this about your persistent defense of (clearly indefensible) stance Barack Hussein Obama took (“the games should not be about homosexuals, except the fact I will try to make them about homosexuals”) or your attempts to stir up the trouble where no trouble exists and ignore the inconvenient fact that Russia has no laws, prohibiting homosexual intercourse, while the closest US allies most surely does, without a pip from Barack Hussein Obama, or both? ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-russia-with-love-president-sends-openly-gay-athletes-to-sochi/676645/103 "2013-12-31T12:49:29Z")
If a message needs to be sent, who need it more? SA or Russia? If you had to choose, which country would you rather be gay in? ---
**Author:** ![stpauler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-russia-with-love-president-sends-openly-gay-athletes-to-sochi/676645/104 "2013-12-31T13:16:49Z")
> [@burunduk34](#): > > I’ll be happy to skip to the endgame, **Marley23**. > Is this about your persistent defense of (clearly indefensible) stance Barack Hussein Obama took (“the games should not be about homosexuals, except the fact I will try to make them about homosexuals”) or your attempts to stir up the trouble where no trouble exists and ignore the inconvenient fact that Russia has no laws, prohibiting homosexual intercourse, while the closest US allies most surely does, without a pip from Barack Hussein Obama, or both? I don’t think you understand what the quotation marks mean unless you can provide a cite where Obama actually said those exact words. Or are you just extrapolating to serve your own homophobic interests? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-russia-with-love-president-sends-openly-gay-athletes-to-sochi/676645/105 "2013-12-31T13:45:43Z")
> [@burunduk34](#): > > Is this about your persistent defense of (clearly indefensible) stance Barack Hussein Obama took (“the games should not be about homosexuals, except the fact I will try to make them about homosexuals”) > [@stpauler](#): > > I don’t think you understand what the quotation marks mean unless you can provide a cite where Obama actually said those exact words. Or are you just extrapolating to serve your own homophobic interests? He’s said nothing that can be paraphrased that way either. And of course we already know that a couple of other countries used their Olympic delegations to make their feelings about this law known. [QUOTE=burunduk34] Russia has no laws, prohibiting homosexual intercourse [/quote] No one said it did. You’re tilting at straw here. > [@](#): > > while the closest US allies most surely does The U.K.? Canada? Give me a hint. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2013, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-russia-with-love-president-sends-openly-gay-athletes-to-sochi/676645/106 "2013-12-31T14:04:01Z")
> [@burunduk34](#): > > Yes, and no doubt you think that eye-fucking a beheaded skull of a prepubescent boy, after you’ve used rusty pliers to rip out his intestines and repeatedly forced him to defecate on his own dying mother, is a swell idea. We don’t allow personal insults here. Attributing such an offensive opinion to another poster constitutes an insult. Don’t do this again. **twickster** , MPSIMS moderator ---
**Author:** ![Pidril\_Pidrilych](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f1d935/32.png) [@Pidril\_Pidrilych](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pidril_Pidrilych)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2014, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-russia-with-love-president-sends-openly-gay-athletes-to-sochi/676645/107 "2014-03-01T17:09:24Z")
Well, the Games are over, and, just as the President said, the Russian team was quite clearly affected by its exclusion of gay athletes: it only took 13 golds, barely placing ahead of Norway. Billy Jean King was magnificent and made Putin visibly nervous on numerous occasions by not even showing up at the Olympics. Now that the attention of the world turns to Ukraine, the President should send another strong and clear message to Putin, that any violation of the rights of gay Ukrainians will not be tolerated. Is there any gay Ukrainian we could send somewhere to show the Russians we mean business? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-russia-with-love-president-sends-openly-gay-athletes-to-sochi/676645.md?page=5)