church and Putin share..when convenient to them. Their history together is interesting..and I like her
ideas as a strategy on how to push back. Get as many church leaders involved etc..won't be
easy but it is a smart approach. Another thing I noticed and thought was a good foundation to
springboard from, was when Obama was asked; so what is the disconnect in Russia versus the
US with gay rights ( I am paraphrasing here ) by Jay Leno..Obama gave a great answer...he equated what
the Russian government with the laws we see in third world countries. People around the world expect
better than that, even with all their corruption issues in Russia, they should be above third world
nations and it was a warning shot to Putin. Of course since then, Putin really has gone off the charts
with troops in Crimea.


There are not a lot of options, but I think the combination of these would highlight to the world that
Russia is falling into the abyss..not a direction they should be going.

Pussy Riot was spot on, very in tune with what was going to get worse...courageous too, to say the least.

I have taken the trouble to read some of their jingo screeds, and they remind me of the Neocon babble about the inevitable omnipotence of the USA. And Leo Strauss, he was in there, and fairy tales about Plato and Aristotle, and lots of cant about morals and "strength". Very old school.

On the one hand, you can argue that that sort of fatuous attitude will weaken Russia just like it has debilitated us.

On the other hand, also like us, they can do a Hell of a lot of damage in the process.

Stalin even resurrected the church to help win the Great Patriotic War for the motherland after doing everything he could in the 1930s to destroy it. The article makes good points, but the church/state relationship isn't some recent Putin/KGB maneuver, it goes back at least to Ivan the Terrible.

This goes back to the Horde and the way that they interacted with subject peoples.

The leader of a community was the religious leader. No secular leaders were allowed. People were categorized not by skin color but by confession.

(Oddly, the Soviets sort of continued this: You weren't categorized so much by nationality at times as by political ideology.)

I agree with the tactic of making Russia's anti-gay law a 'huge deal' during the Olympic season. OTOH, carrying double-standards forward isn't going to help anyone get justice in the long run.

If contemporary Russia doesn't seem to care about how Americans view them, maybe its because they know they are being relentlessly stereotyped and subjected to American 'Russophobia' as I call it. A lot of clueless people who ritualistically foam at the mouth over anything Russian or any Russian personage who is not meekly running away from their country of origin have, I think, taken the pro-gay protests as being an extension of their own bigoted world. That would be the wrong lesson to take from the incident.

Countries like India and Saudi Arabia escape intense criticism because they're considered US allies. But the double-standard that begets silence doesn't help gays in any of those foreign countries. The political calculus resulting from protests against Russia's repressive new law may result in gays gaining in stature here in the US, but I fear it will be at the expense of many gay people abroad.