Keith Olbermann torches IOC bureaucrats over fears sponsors might revolt in fallout over Russian LGBT abuse: 'Money terrified is money that will do what you want'

(Via Towleroad)

Below: the gay Russian anchorman who was fired for coming out on the air following the passage of draconian antiLGBT legislation talks to a latter-day Russian shadow of Anita Bryant. Watching Russians discuss this issue is more interesting than secondhand back-and-forth between U.S. commenters. Kudos to the BBC. The actual provisions of the law are here.

U.S. figure skater Johnny Weir, wearing a Red Army coat, explains to Keith Olbermann that he is a normal person

"My main opinion about being gay is while I'm over the top and fabulous and I am a figure skater at the end of the day — I'm a normal person."


(Via Outports)

In 1968, gay Olympic decathlete Tom Waddell had Tommie Smith’s back. Now Smith has insulted his legacy by contrasting 'human rights' with 'gay rights'

Also: how Sochi officials will break gay "propaganda" law each time they play U.S. national anthem during a medal ceremony

Wikipedia

At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City during the medal ceremonies following the 200-meter race, the U.S. gold and bronze medalists, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos, both shoeless in solidarity with the impoverished, put their gloved fists in the air in a black power salute to focus attention on the plight of blacks in America.
     Photos of that moment are probably the most famous ever taken at an Olympiad.

The two athletes were booed and forced out of the Games by the president of the International Olympic Committee at the time, Avery Brundage, although they were NOT stripped of their medals.

     That wasn't the only fallout. The third man on the podium, silver medalist Australian Peter Norman, was vilified at home for wearing his Olympic Project for Human Rights badge in solidarity.
     Then there was the (closeted) gay Army Captain, Dr. Tom Waddell, who served as the U.S. team physician, who reputedly helped Smith and Carlos polish their statements to the press, and who said publicly that they had "been discredited by the flag more often than they have discredited it."
     For his unqualified support, Waddell was threatened with a court martial, never carried out because he placed 6th of 33 competitors in the decathlon, much better than the Army had expected their hastily-prepped best hope to have fared in the games. From People:

He finally graduated in 1965 from the New Jersey College of Medicine. During an Army tour he refused assignment to Vietnam and worked in the antiwar movement off-duty hours. The brass gladly shunted him off to the Army track team in 1968. Despite the fact that he trained only three months (Bruce Jenner spent four years) and took time off to write press releases for black power advocates on the team, Waddell nearly won a medal for the U.S.

     Now, 45 years later, there are rumblings of Olympic protests over Russia's escalating abuse of its LGBT citizens and threats by the International Olympic Committee to come down hard on LGBT athletes who stage "political" demonstrations simply by saying — or showing — who they are.
     And what does civil rights champion Tommie Smith think about that — about the civil rights of LGBT Russians and gay athletes who could be the grandchildren of the man who unreservedly supported him?

The waiter tortured in this Russian picure may already
be dead. Authorities are harassing a 72-year-old mother and
her physician son, Dr. Valentin Degtyarev, MD, who closely
monitors the infamous neoNazi group “Occupy Pedofilyaj.”
No arrests have been made.

     Not much apparently. In fact, Smith coldly, condescendingly separated "human rights" from "gay rights" in comments he just made to the AP's Andrew Dampf in Italy:

     It's always a question about issues. Like I was back in `68 when it was a human rights issue," Smith added. "Now it's a gay rights issue. They have to make their minds up how they feel about a particular situation. They need to figure it out. I won't do it for them. I have my own feelings."
     The 69-year-old Smith is not a firm supporter of gays.
     "Do I approve of it? I don't believe so, because I believe in the Bible and it doesn't really give leeway in this," Smith said.

     In 1982, Tom Waddell founded what he intended to call the Gay Olympic Games, until the United States Olympic Committee filed a petition to seek an injunction from allowing the games to use the Olympic title.

Although previously the Rat Olympics, Police Olympics, Dog Olympics and Special Olympics had all gone unchallenged, the USOC felt that the use of the name in a homosexual event would tarnish the reputation of their trademark. The injunction was eventually granted and hundreds of thousands of dollars in merchandise and signage had to be removed from the event in order to adhere with the court's decree.

The Gay Olympic Games were redubbed the Gay Games and were a great success, "perhaps because they emphasized sportsmanship, personal achievement, and inclusiveness to a far greater degree than the Olympics."

     In 1981, Waddell had met public-relations man and fundraiser Zohn Artman, with whom he fell in love and began a relationship. That same year, Waddell, who had longed to be a father, also met lesbian athlete Sara Lewinstein and they decided to have a child together. Their daughter Jessica was born in 1983 and they were married in 1985.
     In 1985, Waddell was diagnosed with AIDS. Although dogged by the lawsuit filed by the U.S.O.C. to recover legal fees in the battle over the right to use the word "Olympics," Waddell lived his final years with bravery and dignity. He saw the enormous success of Gay Games II in 1986, and even participated in it, winning a gold medal in the Javelin event.
     Waddell died on July 11, 1987 with the enormous grace and courage that marked his life. His last words were "Well, this should be interesting."
     The battle over the right to use the term "Gay Olympics" continued in the courts and was not finally settled until 1987, when the Supreme Court of the United States, in a 5-4 decision, ruled in favor of the U.S.O.C. and affirmed the U.S.O.C.'s right to collect legal fees from Waddell.

Dick Schaap on Tom Waddell:

     The final weeks of his life were torture for Waddell. The Supreme Court of the United States, by a vote of five to four, ruled in favor of the USOC, against the Gay Games' use of the word Olympic. Tom said it [the Supreme Court decision]  wasn't really a defeat, that the mere fact that the case had gone to the Supreme Court had exposed the pettiness and silliness of the USOC's homophobic position. The Supreme Court didn't dampen his spirit. But AIDS did.
     I knew him for only seven months, but he may have been the most impressive human being I ever met. Certainly he was the most impressive athlete. He combined strength and sensitivity, intelligence and courage, compassion and competitiveness, in dazzling doses. He contradicted all the stereotypes of both the athlete and the homosexual.
     I met Tom Waddell because I wanted to do a story about him for ABC's 20/20 program. I met him when he was dying. When I started to research his story, I called a United States Olympic Committee official, an old friend, and asked him how I could get in touch with Toomey. He asked me why I wanted to reach Toomey, and I said I was doing a story about Waddell.
     "Why do you want to do a story about some fag and some dyke having a kid?" the USOC official asked.

     When Waddell died, $96,600 in liens were still attached to his Victorian house and other property because the USOC's attorney, Vaughn Walker, a partner in Pillsbury Madison & Sutro (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman) refused to release them. Walker said that Mary Dunlap, Waddell's attorney, never asked him to. Dunlap replied, essentially, that he was lying:

Ms. Dunlap contended that Walker ''misrepresented the facts'' to the committee by telling senators that she had done nothing to obtain an order removing the liens. Ms. Dunlap said that she and Waddell's estate lawyer repeatedly tried without success to get Walker to sign a release.

     This caused incredible distress to Waddell in the last days of his life, as he worried that his daughter might not inherit his house. The liens were not released until six days after Waddell died.
     Senator Patrick Leahy asked Walker about that during his confirmation hearing following his nomination to the federal bench:

     ...He [Walker] added that in his opinion, ''The liens were ineffective after the court of appeals judgment'' which vacated them.
     If that were so, Leahy asked, ''Why didn't you sign the release?''
     ''The client [U.S. Olympic Committee] wanted to pursue it,'' Walker said.

And why were the liens that Vaughn Walker and the USOC slapped on Waddell's property vacated by an appellate court?

¶26 On remand, the trial court should determine how much of the work was reasonably necessary. Most of the counts advanced by plaintiffs appear to have been ignored after the initial pleading. Plaintiffs' primary argument in its motion for attorneys' fees has been abandoned on appeal. If, after a Kerr and Sealy hearing, fees are to be awarded, the court should examine both the reasonableness and necessity for the rather impressive amount of time accumulated on this case.
¶27 The injunction is affirmed with costs. The fee award is vacated and remanded.

International Olympic Committee decides that, despite poor TV ratings, wrestling can stay after all

Wrestling's international governing body, FILA, ousted its president, spent millions on a global PR/lobbying blitz, simplified rules, added women's weight classes and considered changing mat colors and restyling singlets to reboot the sport's Olympic presentation in an apparent attempt to boost TV ratings to help wrestling better offset the out-of-control costs of the modern games. Said the Washington Post:

     After a seven-month exile, wrestling reclaimed its place on the Olympic stage Sunday, beating squash and a combined bid by baseball and softball for the lone remaining spot on the program for the 2020 and 2024 Summer Games.

Iowa wrestler

     Persuaded that the ancient sport is committed to remaking itself to appeal to a more diverse, contemporary audience, a majority of International Olympic Committee delegates favored wrestling’s addition in first-round balloting held in Buenos Aires.
     Wrestling drew 49 votes; baseball-softball, 24; and squash, 22, after representatives of each made one final, 20-minute sales pitch about how their sport could strengthen the 21st century Olympic brand.

Russian homophobes with assault rifles now evidently looking for LGBTs

Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin was forced by worldwide revulsion, demonstrations and President Obama's vow to meet with Russian LGBT activists, to comment on the war on Russian LGBTs Putin has engineered via draconian new legislation as a distraction to deflect attention on the corruption of his government.

"I assure you that I work with these people, I sometimes award them with state prizes or decorations for their achievements in various fields," Putin said in an interview with Associated Press and Russia's state Channel 1 television.

Meanwhile, the BBC interviewed "Yekaterina," head of one of many Russian 'Occupy Paedophilia' chapters: "Our priority is uncovering cases of pedophilia. But we are also against the promotion of homosexuality and if, along the way, we encounter people of non-traditional sexual orientation, we can kill two birds with one stone."

-

Russia considers another antiLGBT law, to remove kids from homes of gay parents; rationale: discredited University of Texas Regnerus study

The man who introduced the law into Russia's Duma, Alexei Zhuravlyov, said law enforcement would establish a parent’s sexuality “if necessary.” From Buzzfeed:

     Russia’s rubber-stamp parliament regularly passes Kremlin-backed laws unanimously, including the “gay propaganda” ban that it passed in June, earning it the nickname of “the rabid printer.”
     Zhuravlyov estimates that just between five and seven percent of Russians are gay, and about a third of that number - between 2.3 and 3.3. million people - have children.
     Zhuravlyov’s bill would also extend to single gay parents. Russia’s run-down orphanages already hold hundreds of thousands of children, many of whose parents are alive but unfit to parent.
     “A homosexualist shouldn’t bring up a child. He perverts it. He harms him a lot more than if he were in a children’s home,” Zhuravlyov said. As evidence, Zhuravlyov’s bill cites a study by Mark Regnerus, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, which argued that children of gay parents were as much as a third more likely to be gay than children of straight parents, and at greater risk of suicide, sexually transmitted disease, unemployment, and cheating on their partners. Regnerus’ study has been widely discredited, but Zhuravlyov wrote that it had been “carefully checked by independent experts and raises no doubts.”

The scholarly merit of the laughable Regnerus Study has been questioned by 200 PhDs and MDs; it was concocted to influence the gay marriage debate now before the Supreme Court and it was called "bullshit" by an editor of the very journal that published it, Darren E. Sherkat, who was assigned to audit the study after the uproar it caused.
     The prestigious American Sociological Association ripped apart the junk science of the Regnerus "research" in a Supreme Court brief opposing the upholding of California's Prop 8 (on pages 15-22, which you may read here.)

Russian teen's dad forces him to file complaint about gay protester he saw online; father hates gays because ex-wife left him for a woman; Dimitry Isakov may be first to be convicted under new gay propaganda law

Above: Dmitry Isakov holds a sign reading “Being gay and loving gays is normal.
Beating gays and killing gays is a crime! (cs306713.vk.me / Via VK)

Max Seddon of BuzzFeed reports on the first person who may be convicted (not charged) under Russia's new gay "propaganda" law.

Police in the central Russian city of Kazan filed charges against Dmitry Isakov Thursday for his protest on July 30 this year, his legal team told BuzzFeed. Isakov stood in the city center holding a sign that said, “Being gay and loving gays is normal. Beating gays and killing gays is a crime!”
Isakov, 24, is not the first person charged under the law, passed in late June, but stands a good change of being the first person convicted under it, his legal team said...
Police filed the charges on the basis of a complaint from a teenager in the northern Arkhangelskaya province who had seen Isakov’s protest online. The teenager, Erik Fedoseyev, wrote that he had been forced to write the complaint by his father, who hates LGBT people because his ex-wife, Fedoseyev’s mother, had left the family to live with another woman when he was four...

Isakov told the The Times of London that after his one-man protest, Kazan cops beat him so badly he had to walk on crutches for ten days. When he was well enough to return to work, he discovered that the local branch of then-Sberbank had fired him.

Coke, marquee sponsor of Sochi DADT Olympics, takes out print ads claiming sweetner in Diet Coke is 'healthy alternative' to sugar. It's not

Salon says Coke is taking out newspaper ads touting health benefits of aspertame:

---

     When one of the leading Junk Food Giants says it wants to help fight obesity by selling you more Diet Coke, nothing could be further from the truth. But when it takes that campaign a step farther, by paying newspapers to run full-page ads disguised as scientific articles, that’s deceptive advertising at its worst.
     We should be celebrating a 3-percent decline in sales of Diet Coke. And we should be boycotting any product that contains aspartame, a synthetic chemical compound linked to a host of health issues, including obesity, and brought to market under the shadow of dirty politics.

Putin moves part of Russian Navy toward Syria

Russian prosecutors cover their faces during raid of gay activist's home

(Via JoeMyGod)

#dumpcoke Not just Russian vodka: Queer Nation pours Coke into Times Square gutters to protest company's 'marquee sponsorship' of DADT Sochi Olympics

McDonalds, marquee sponsor of DADT Sochi Olympics, sued a 5-year-old and banned her from its restaurants after she appeared in a Burger King ad

And the small actress was Sarah Michelle Gellar. As Buzzfeed concluded, don't mess with Ronald McDonald.

Coke issues a press release after Queer Nation rips it for appeasing the intimidation of gay athletes and Russian citizens

Also: How Sochi officials will break gay "propaganda" law each time they play U.S. national anthem during a medal ceremony; Sovietsky Sport's racist coverage of 2013 IAAF win of Russian women's 4x400 relay team over U.S. team: 'our fair-skinned girls massively beat the black-skinned ones'; Sportswriter Frank Deford: Send U.S. athletes to Sochi but keep USOC officials at home  

Coke's response included bullet points like this:

Our Global Supplier Diversity team participates in outreach events such as the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) Awards Dinner, the NGLCC Business and Leadership Conference, and the Atlanta Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce Corporate Sponsors Reception.

     Queer Nation (whose action today in NYC's Times Square was documented here) responded with the graphic at left.
     In its press release, Coke reminded readers that it has been an Olympic Sponsor since 1928. What it did not mention specifically was its cold-blooded support of Hitler's 1936 Nazi Olympic showcase and the fact that it placed ads for Coca Cola in Hitler Youth publications.