5 ms·

The LGBT Russia thing is totally blown out of proportion. http://www.scribd.com/doc/203382931/Russian-Lgbt-Law-White-Paper http://www.scribd.com/doc/203382931/

by boyter 13y ago

The LGBT Russia thing is totally blown out of proportion. http://www.scribd.com/doc/203382931/Russian-Lgbt-Law-White-Paper http://www.scribd.com/doc/203382931/Russian-Lgbt-Law-White-P... Before you decide to down-vote me into oblivion and accuse me of hating minority groups please read the white paper linked above. Note I am not affiliated with the person who wrote it or scribd. I just want people to see both sides of the argument. EDIT - And what a surprise down-voted. Seriously did anyone clicking the down arrow actually read the paper? Considering how long it is and that this post is 5 minutes old I seriously doubt it.

jack-r-abbit 13y ago
Probably not many people are going to read a 72 page document about a topic when the media has already told us what to think. Sad but true.
ossreality 13y ago
In what way does that depict it as overblown? edit: Yeah, I skimmed it and it mentions most of the stuff that people are "blowing up" over... edit2: You assholes hell banning for no reason is one thing, but flat out not posting my replies is shitty. edit3: Would someone tell sdegutis to shut the hell up? We all know he is religious and anti-contraception and the rest of it. Stop trying to make it out like it's "distracting". You're just pathetic.
ocfx 13y ago
hater
devilshaircut 13y ago
"Both sides of the argument." That Russia has a reasonable political platform regarding its LGBT citizens? I am not sure that it is possible to 'blow out of proportion' what is most certainly a human rights issue. This was your own assertion, not that of the paper's. The topic was the Google Doodle showing support for LGBT people and your first impulse is to imply that the situation in Russia is in fact a non-issue. That is why you were downvoted, man.
- boyter 13y ago
  I didn't say it was a non-issue. I said it was overblown. The current media coverage of the issue is overblown. I belive I am being down-voted because this is a sensitive issue. Anyone suggesting that perhaps its not as bad as it seems is instantly shouted down. Please, please, please read the linked white paper. It is well researched, well written and provides citations and sources to its conclusions. It is also written by a lawyer who identifies themselves as part of the LGBT community. If nothing else, scroll down and read the translation of the Russian Federation law in there (the only good version I could find) and really think on what it means to the individual.
  - devilshaircut 13y ago
    I have no comment about the paper itself. You were bemoaning being downvoted, and I explained why. I was commenting on the context which you provided inside of your original comment. If you actually don't care or don't wonder why such a comment would be downvoted, then disregard my post(s).
    - boyter 13y ago
      I was complaining about being down-voted over what was obviously an emotional response to a sensitive topic since it was so swift. I think that is a reasonable thing to complain about. I expected to be down-voted. I was also hoping that there would be enough people around with an objective point of view to read the paper and provide solid cited counter arguments. I hold no stake in this. I am neither Russian or part of the LGBT community. I am interested in human rights, and I want equal opportunities for all regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender or otherwise. Torch and pitchfork attacks are not the way to achieve this.
- spaceborn 13y ago
  > That Russia has a reasonable political platform regarding its LGBT citizens? Are you saying that this position can simply be disregarded out of hand? That strikes me as disrespectful and self-important. If nothing else it is non-conducive to any actual discussion on the matter - unless all you want is an echo chamber to reaffirm your preexisting positions on the matter. > The topic was the Google Doodle showing support for LGBT people Specifically in relation to the LGBT issues surrounding the Olympics, i.e., Russia's "anti-gay" laws. The Russian laws are very much a part of this topic. You're being disingenuous.
olegious 13y ago
Thank you for linking to this. Finally someone taking the time to actually discuss the law and its consequences rather than rehashing the same breathless bs that is printed and repeated in the media.
seivan 13y ago
Did you really not expected to get down voted for being completely ignorant about the problems there? You might want to do some reading up - starting with this 5 series VICE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ_aSl3ktjg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ_aSl3ktjg
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- boyter 13y ago
  I expected to get voted down. Not because what I posted didn't add value, but because this is the sort of topic I avoid in day to day conversation because it causes fights. There is too much emotion involved. I am not saying there are not problems. I am saying that the media coverage of it is overblown, and because of that any rational thought or discussion about it is impossible. I provided a link to a document which as I pointed out elsewhere is well written, researched, provides citations and has some reasonable conclusions. I understand it is hard to remove emotion from this sort of topics, in much the same way that discussions on climate change rapidly spiral out of control. I had hoped that HN was beyond being a vote brigade and that posting it would produce some reasonable discussion on the topic.
  - seivan 13y ago
    Reasonable discussion? Nothing you said or listed was reasonable. Read up http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201402/being-gay-in-russia http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201402/being-gay-...
    - devilshaircut 13y ago
      I agree with you and I want to add that in my view, the idea of something which is so clearly a front-and-center human rights issue, cannot easily be "overblown". Violence against people, discrimination, hate-based crimes - these are all things which rate fairly high on the "worth covering" scale of news media.
    - 13y ago
bigs204 13y ago
Hey, people don't like to change opinion things that they already made up their minds on. Even on HN. but thanks for linking that, seems to do a better job of providing better context of the LGBT situation in Russia.
taopao 13y ago
Yes, for every single argument there are two equally valid sides. Right. Give me a goddamned break.
- boyter 13y ago
  Letting the media tell you what to think is also valid. Right. Give me a break. Seriously, without getting snarky, how about you actually read the whitepaper. The person who wrote it is a lawyer and member of the LGBT community.
magicalist 13y ago
Still reading, but impressions on the intro and first chapter: what a totally bizarre paper. It's a "white paper", but it's written as an autobiographical narrative of his research process. And usually "Executive Summary" does not refer to a top 10 list. It's very obviously written for the purposes of advocacy, despite protestations that it's not. The defense of this law seems to be: 1) It's not that bad. It doesn't target the LGBT community, it just bans any sort of public acknowledgement of a class of people that just happens to include LGBT folks. 2) The media has blown this way out of proportion by saying what the law only implies. Also by not mentioning that the law was enacted to protect the children. Why don't they mention the children? 3) Even if the law is that bad, it hasn't been enforced much yet. 4) Even if the law is bad, those guys over there are just as bed. Oh yeah, definitely want to consider both sides of this argument. Just out of curiosity, boyter. When you refer to "both sides", how would you sum up the other side in one sentence? "It's not that bad" is not, in fact, a defense of anything.
- magicalist 13y ago
  "Would the US government and news media (all owned by multinational conglomerates) implement a enormous propaganda campaign demanding the repeal of Russian Federation Federal Law No. 135-FZ because of the potential revenue loss a company in violation could incur with a 90 day suspension resulting in lower than projected revenues leading to a negative impact on the company’s stock price and ultimately causing a negative impact on key US economic indicators?" "With all that in mind, we can conclude that the only accurate, fact-based, logical answer to the question is YES" Wow, just wow. This guy is a nutjob. He argues with a straight face that the Russian law isn't targeting the LGBT community, just non-traditional sexual relationships. He's either a liar about his long involvement in the LGBT community or he's learned absolutely nothing from it, as it's classic couching of terms as cover. He even brings up the (unenforceable) anti-sodomy laws in US states, discussing how the majority of them are actually written to outlaw sodomy (non-vaginal intercourse) between any two people, not just same-sex couples, but they were used as tools to specifically target homosexual long after they were no longer (or rarely) enforced against heterosexual people. And yet he can't seem to connect the dots. In any case, this goes from infuriating to fucking stupid pretty quickly. Check out the pages culminating in the conclusion I quoted above on page 70.
mkr-hn 13y ago
I read the executive summary. It's great that Russia is making legal progress, and I mean that, but that doesn't change the situation on the ground where people are being beaten and arrested.
- osipov 13y ago
  The paper also talks about statistics on how often gay people are beaten in Russia. United States is far worse in this respect. Further United States has a greater incarceration rate for gays than Russia.
  - mkr-hn 13y ago
    What's your point?
    - erichocean 13y ago
      That if you care about what's on paper, yeah, Russia is worse than the US. But if you care about facts on the ground—what people do, not what they say—then the US is worse than Russia. I have no idea about any of the facts, but that's what I took to be what he was saying.
      - mkr-hn 13y ago
        I get that. I just don't see how it's relevant in a thread about Russia's laws. There's progress to be made and progress to be celebrated all over the world.
  - subsection1h 13y ago
    See my reply to boyter. The white paper does not adequately show that fewer "gay people are beaten in Russia".
  - Crito 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes Fucking hell, the countries are even the same here...
ttdi 13y ago
I'm sorry, this paper is bizarre and somewhat incoherent. magicalist goes into some of the problems with it, but the even larger problem that I see is that it seems to completely ignore the larger climate of intimidation and erasure by public officials, and look at "are specific people being harmed by this specific law", and I'm disinclined to trust its analysis even on that. It's written by somebody who claims to be a journalist and managing editor yet has basically zero online presence in bylines or anything that I can find. Nor does he provide any contact information (apart from being from Chicago, which, good for him, I guess?). That makes very little sense. In the US at large, LGBT rights and support for them has been growing, imperfectly and inconsistently, but growing. In Russia, it seems that there's been a backlash, and Putin and company are stirring up public sentiment against LGBT people. I'll take the word of Russians that things are actively getting worse: http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201402/being-gay-in-russia http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201402/being-gay-...
- boyter 13y ago
  As I wrote elsewhere, ignore the conclusions. The facts presented are what I am interested in.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
subsection1h 13y ago
> It is well researched, well written and provides citations and sources to its conclusions. First, this white paper is horribly written in comparison to a real research paper or academic report. It seems to be written for the audience of a site such as Infowars, which, not surprisingly, is one of the main sites that have promoted this white paper.[1] Second, I was mostly interested in the author's comparison of the rates of hate crimes committed against LGBT people in Russia and the US. Not surprisingly, the author simply compares rates reported by the SOVA Center and the FBI. Anyone who has studied criminology for five minutes knows that you can't adequately compare the levels of crime in different areas this way. The American Society of Criminology, the largest criminological association in the world, has stated this numerous times in their publications, including their policy statements[2] (which strongly recommend against using Unified Crime Reports (UCRs) to compare levels of crime in different cities that are located IN THE SAME COUNTRY). > It is also written by a lawyer who identifies themselves as part of the LGBT community. Yes, and Bjørn Lomborg is a lifelong environmentalist, which I also learned at Infowars. The only mention of Brian M. Heiss, the author of the white paper, anywhere on the Internet[3][4] is this white paper. Please direct me to this author, which should be easy since he's apparently your favorite source regarding this issue. I would never cite a source whose existence I couldn't prove. > Letting the media tell you what to think Are Amnesty International[5] and Human Rights Watch[6] "the media"? [1] http://www.infowars.com/the-truth-about-russias-anti-gay-law/ http://www.infowars.com/the-truth-about-russias-anti-gay-law... [2] http://www.asc41.com/policies/policyPositions.html http://www.asc41.com/policies/policyPositions.html [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Brian+M+Heiss%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Brian+M+Heiss%22 [4] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Brian+Heiss%22+%22lawyer%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Brian+Heiss%22+%22lawyer%... [5] http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/annual-report-russian-federation-2013 http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/annual-report-rus... [6] http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/02/03/russia-sochi-games-highlight-homophobic-violence http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/02/03/russia-sochi-games-highli...

by boyter 13y ago

jack-r-abbit 13y ago

Probably not many people are going to read a 72 page document about a topic when the media has already told us what to think. Sad but true.

ossreality 13y ago

In what way does that depict it as overblown? edit: Yeah, I skimmed it and it mentions most of the stuff that people are "blowing up" over... edit2: You assholes hell banning for no reason is one thing, but flat out not posting my replies is shitty. edit3: Would someone tell sdegutis to shut the hell up? We all know he is religious and anti-contraception and the rest of it. Stop trying to make it out like it's "distracting". You're just pathetic.

ocfx 13y ago

hater

devilshaircut 13y ago

"Both sides of the argument." That Russia has a reasonable political platform regarding its LGBT citizens? I am not sure that it is possible to 'blow out of proportion' what is most certainly a human rights issue. This was your own assertion, not that of the paper's. The topic was the Google Doodle showing support for LGBT people and your first impulse is to imply that the situation in Russia is in fact a non-issue. That is why you were downvoted, man.

boyter 13y ago
I didn't say it was a non-issue. I said it was overblown. The current media coverage of the issue is overblown. I belive I am being down-voted because this is a sensitive issue. Anyone suggesting that perhaps its not as bad as it seems is instantly shouted down. Please, please, please read the linked white paper. It is well researched, well written and provides citations and sources to its conclusions. It is also written by a lawyer who identifies themselves as part of the LGBT community. If nothing else, scroll down and read the translation of the Russian Federation law in there (the only good version I could find) and really think on what it means to the individual.
- devilshaircut 13y ago
  I have no comment about the paper itself. You were bemoaning being downvoted, and I explained why. I was commenting on the context which you provided inside of your original comment. If you actually don't care or don't wonder why such a comment would be downvoted, then disregard my post(s).
  - boyter 13y ago
    I was complaining about being down-voted over what was obviously an emotional response to a sensitive topic since it was so swift. I think that is a reasonable thing to complain about. I expected to be down-voted. I was also hoping that there would be enough people around with an objective point of view to read the paper and provide solid cited counter arguments. I hold no stake in this. I am neither Russian or part of the LGBT community. I am interested in human rights, and I want equal opportunities for all regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender or otherwise. Torch and pitchfork attacks are not the way to achieve this.
spaceborn 13y ago
> That Russia has a reasonable political platform regarding its LGBT citizens? Are you saying that this position can simply be disregarded out of hand? That strikes me as disrespectful and self-important. If nothing else it is non-conducive to any actual discussion on the matter - unless all you want is an echo chamber to reaffirm your preexisting positions on the matter. > The topic was the Google Doodle showing support for LGBT people Specifically in relation to the LGBT issues surrounding the Olympics, i.e., Russia's "anti-gay" laws. The Russian laws are very much a part of this topic. You're being disingenuous.

olegious 13y ago

Thank you for linking to this. Finally someone taking the time to actually discuss the law and its consequences rather than rehashing the same breathless bs that is printed and repeated in the media.

seivan 13y ago

Did you really not expected to get down voted for being completely ignorant about the problems there? You might want to do some reading up - starting with this 5 series VICE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ_aSl3ktjg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ_aSl3ktjg

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
boyter 13y ago
I expected to get voted down. Not because what I posted didn't add value, but because this is the sort of topic I avoid in day to day conversation because it causes fights. There is too much emotion involved. I am not saying there are not problems. I am saying that the media coverage of it is overblown, and because of that any rational thought or discussion about it is impossible. I provided a link to a document which as I pointed out elsewhere is well written, researched, provides citations and has some reasonable conclusions. I understand it is hard to remove emotion from this sort of topics, in much the same way that discussions on climate change rapidly spiral out of control. I had hoped that HN was beyond being a vote brigade and that posting it would produce some reasonable discussion on the topic.
- seivan 13y ago
  Reasonable discussion? Nothing you said or listed was reasonable. Read up http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201402/being-gay-in-russia http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201402/being-gay-...
  - devilshaircut 13y ago
    I agree with you and I want to add that in my view, the idea of something which is so clearly a front-and-center human rights issue, cannot easily be "overblown". Violence against people, discrimination, hate-based crimes - these are all things which rate fairly high on the "worth covering" scale of news media.
  - 13y ago

bigs204 13y ago

Hey, people don't like to change opinion things that they already made up their minds on. Even on HN. but thanks for linking that, seems to do a better job of providing better context of the LGBT situation in Russia.

taopao 13y ago

Yes, for every single argument there are two equally valid sides. Right. Give me a goddamned break.

boyter 13y ago
Letting the media tell you what to think is also valid. Right. Give me a break. Seriously, without getting snarky, how about you actually read the whitepaper. The person who wrote it is a lawyer and member of the LGBT community.

magicalist 13y ago

Still reading, but impressions on the intro and first chapter: what a totally bizarre paper. It's a "white paper", but it's written as an autobiographical narrative of his research process. And usually "Executive Summary" does not refer to a top 10 list. It's very obviously written for the purposes of advocacy, despite protestations that it's not. The defense of this law seems to be: 1) It's not that bad. It doesn't target the LGBT community, it just bans any sort of public acknowledgement of a class of people that just happens to include LGBT folks. 2) The media has blown this way out of proportion by saying what the law only implies. Also by not mentioning that the law was enacted to protect the children. Why don't they mention the children? 3) Even if the law is that bad, it hasn't been enforced much yet. 4) Even if the law is bad, those guys over there are just as bed. Oh yeah, definitely want to consider both sides of this argument. Just out of curiosity, boyter. When you refer to "both sides", how would you sum up the other side in one sentence? "It's not that bad" is not, in fact, a defense of anything.

magicalist 13y ago
"Would the US government and news media (all owned by multinational conglomerates) implement a enormous propaganda campaign demanding the repeal of Russian Federation Federal Law No. 135-FZ because of the potential revenue loss a company in violation could incur with a 90 day suspension resulting in lower than projected revenues leading to a negative impact on the company’s stock price and ultimately causing a negative impact on key US economic indicators?" "With all that in mind, we can conclude that the only accurate, fact-based, logical answer to the question is YES" Wow, just wow. This guy is a nutjob. He argues with a straight face that the Russian law isn't targeting the LGBT community, just non-traditional sexual relationships. He's either a liar about his long involvement in the LGBT community or he's learned absolutely nothing from it, as it's classic couching of terms as cover. He even brings up the (unenforceable) anti-sodomy laws in US states, discussing how the majority of them are actually written to outlaw sodomy (non-vaginal intercourse) between any two people, not just same-sex couples, but they were used as tools to specifically target homosexual long after they were no longer (or rarely) enforced against heterosexual people. And yet he can't seem to connect the dots. In any case, this goes from infuriating to fucking stupid pretty quickly. Check out the pages culminating in the conclusion I quoted above on page 70.

mkr-hn 13y ago

I read the executive summary. It's great that Russia is making legal progress, and I mean that, but that doesn't change the situation on the ground where people are being beaten and arrested.

osipov 13y ago
The paper also talks about statistics on how often gay people are beaten in Russia. United States is far worse in this respect. Further United States has a greater incarceration rate for gays than Russia.
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  What's your point?
  - erichocean 13y ago
    That if you care about what's on paper, yeah, Russia is worse than the US. But if you care about facts on the ground—what people do, not what they say—then the US is worse than Russia. I have no idea about any of the facts, but that's what I took to be what he was saying.
    - mkr-hn 13y ago
      I get that. I just don't see how it's relevant in a thread about Russia's laws. There's progress to be made and progress to be celebrated all over the world.
- subsection1h 13y ago
  See my reply to boyter. The white paper does not adequately show that fewer "gay people are beaten in Russia".
- Crito 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes Fucking hell, the countries are even the same here...

ttdi 13y ago

I'm sorry, this paper is bizarre and somewhat incoherent. magicalist goes into some of the problems with it, but the even larger problem that I see is that it seems to completely ignore the larger climate of intimidation and erasure by public officials, and look at "are specific people being harmed by this specific law", and I'm disinclined to trust its analysis even on that. It's written by somebody who claims to be a journalist and managing editor yet has basically zero online presence in bylines or anything that I can find. Nor does he provide any contact information (apart from being from Chicago, which, good for him, I guess?). That makes very little sense. In the US at large, LGBT rights and support for them has been growing, imperfectly and inconsistently, but growing. In Russia, it seems that there's been a backlash, and Putin and company are stirring up public sentiment against LGBT people. I'll take the word of Russians that things are actively getting worse: http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201402/being-gay-in-russia http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201402/being-gay-...

boyter 13y ago
As I wrote elsewhere, ignore the conclusions. The facts presented are what I am interested in.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

subsection1h 13y ago

> It is well researched, well written and provides citations and sources to its conclusions. First, this white paper is horribly written in comparison to a real research paper or academic report. It seems to be written for the audience of a site such as Infowars, which, not surprisingly, is one of the main sites that have promoted this white paper.[1] Second, I was mostly interested in the author's comparison of the rates of hate crimes committed against LGBT people in Russia and the US. Not surprisingly, the author simply compares rates reported by the SOVA Center and the FBI. Anyone who has studied criminology for five minutes knows that you can't adequately compare the levels of crime in different areas this way. The American Society of Criminology, the largest criminological association in the world, has stated this numerous times in their publications, including their policy statements[2] (which strongly recommend against using Unified Crime Reports (UCRs) to compare levels of crime in different cities that are located IN THE SAME COUNTRY). > It is also written by a lawyer who identifies themselves as part of the LGBT community. Yes, and Bjørn Lomborg is a lifelong environmentalist, which I also learned at Infowars. The only mention of Brian M. Heiss, the author of the white paper, anywhere on the Internet[3][4] is this white paper. Please direct me to this author, which should be easy since he's apparently your favorite source regarding this issue. I would never cite a source whose existence I couldn't prove. > Letting the media tell you what to think Are Amnesty International[5] and Human Rights Watch[6] "the media"? [1] http://www.infowars.com/the-truth-about-russias-anti-gay-law/ http://www.infowars.com/the-truth-about-russias-anti-gay-law... [2] http://www.asc41.com/policies/policyPositions.html http://www.asc41.com/policies/policyPositions.html [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Brian+M+Heiss%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Brian+M+Heiss%22 [4] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Brian+Heiss%22+%22lawyer%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Brian+Heiss%22+%22lawyer%... [5] http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/annual-report-russian-federation-2013 http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/annual-report-rus... [6] http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/02/03/russia-sochi-games-highlight-homophobic-violence http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/02/03/russia-sochi-games-highli...