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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 narra

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.
- boyter 13y ago
  Personally I ignored the conclusion's. I am more interested in the facts/citations which appear to be correct.
boyter 13y ago
I agree that the conclusions are odd, however the material presented is what I am interested in. You can draw your own conclusions from there rather then from what the media is telling us. One sentence? "The law in its current form is an improvement over what existed before." BTW I shouldn't have used the phrase "both sides". What I mean is we should not get caught up in the media's interpretation of the law. My mistake there and sorry for the confusion. My referring to the "not that bad" is to way its being presented by the media. I can see how advocating for equality can be listed as a crime based on what's listed in the law. It's interesting that the word "propaganda" is used which leaves a fair amount of room for interpretation. Point 3 is the sore point it seems, although I can see why its in there as you would not want to equate "child-adult" relationships which this would prevent. It all hangs on the word "nontraditional".

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.

boyter 13y ago
Personally I ignored the conclusion's. I am more interested in the facts/citations which appear to be correct.

boyter 13y ago

I agree that the conclusions are odd, however the material presented is what I am interested in. You can draw your own conclusions from there rather then from what the media is telling us. One sentence? "The law in its current form is an improvement over what existed before." BTW I shouldn't have used the phrase "both sides". What I mean is we should not get caught up in the media's interpretation of the law. My mistake there and sorry for the confusion. My referring to the "not that bad" is to way its being presented by the media. I can see how advocating for equality can be listed as a crime based on what's listed in the law. It's interesting that the word "propaganda" is used which leaves a fair amount of room for interpretation. Point 3 is the sore point it seems, although I can see why its in there as you would not want to equate "child-adult" relationships which this would prevent. It all hangs on the word "nontraditional".