Gay Rights Olympic Protest Targets Putin, Coca-Cola in Sochi

By Henry Meyer - Dec 2, 2013

Gay rights activists plan to defy President Vladimir Putin and pressure Olympic sponsors including Coca-Cola Co. (KO) by getting athletes to protest a Russian ban on homosexual “propaganda” during the Sochi Games.

Athlete Ally, based in New York, said it’s in talks with Australian snowboarder Belle Brockhoff and Canadian alpine skier Mike Janyk as well as two others about wearing logos referring to the Olympic charter, which bans all forms of discrimination in its sixth principle.

“There is a tremendous opportunity because the world is going to be watching,” Hudson Taylor, Athlete Ally’s founder and executive director, said by phone on Nov. 27. The sponsors will have “no choice” but to respond, Taylor said.

Coca-Cola, the world’s largest beverage company, and McDonald’s Corp. (MCD), the biggest global restaurant chain by sales, have already endured protests in the U.S. over their sponsorship of the Sochi Games, as has Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest consumer-products maker.

All Out, a New York-based gay rights group with 1.9 million members around the world, hired trucks in October to circle Coca-Cola’s headquarters in Atlanta with billboards urging the drink maker to call on Russia to repeal the law signed by Putin in June.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-02/gay-rights-olympic-protest-to-target-putin-coca-cola-in-sochi.html