Unrespectful?

Russia's top female pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva thinks it is "unrespectful" [sic] that any athlete competing in the Winter Olympics (due to be hosted by that increasingly fascist regime) should dare to show solidarity for gay people who suffer bigotry and state-sponsored hate under new laws in her homeland.

How bloody dare she!

According to this so-called "Olympic Ambassador", it is OK for Russia to endorse bullying and open discrimination against its own LGBT citizens, on the basis of "banning propaganda of 'non-traditional sexual relations'”.

Showing exemplary respect for her fellow man, Miss Isinbayeva declared:

“If we allow to promote and do all this stuff on the street, we are afraid about our nation because we consider ourselves like normal, standard people.”

“We just live with boys with woman, woman with boys. Everything must be fine. It comes from history. We never had any problems, these problems in Russia, and we don’t want to have any in the future.”

Let me point out to the unlovely Yelena a few of the things that have happened recently to "normal, standard people" in Russia who just happen to be gay:

• This year, there have been at least two killings motivated by anti-gay bias in the country, including
• A 23-year-old Volgograd man whose skull was smashed after he was raped with beer bottles.
• A gay man in a village on the Kamchatka peninsula on Russia's eastern coast who was stabbed and trampled to death by three men, and his body set alight.
• In June Moscow Pride co-Founder Nikolai Alekseev was physically and verbally attacked by three skinheads who shouted "Fuck off to Europe you faggot".
• In May, a gay activist was attacked in front of Moscow's State Duma. Six more were detained last month after attempting to stage a protest outside a children's library in the Russian capital.
• Russian legislator Vitaly Milonov, an outspoken proponent of Russia’s Orthodox Church, who drafted the anti-gay bill, has branded gay people "perverts," and has accused LGBT activists of colluding with Western governments to convert Russian children into homosexuals.

Thankfully, some Olympic athletes are standing firm in their statements of solidarity with gay people. From the Independent:

American 800m runner Nick Symmonds, who won silver in his event on the same night as Isinbayeva leapt to her gold... {said} he would dedicate his medal “to my gay and lesbian friends back home”.

Responding to Isinbayeva’s comments, Symmonds said: “It blows my mind that a young, well-travelled, well-educated woman would be so behind the times. She said ‘normal, standard people’ in Russia? Guess what – a lot of these people with Russian citizenship are normal, standard homosexuals. They deserve rights too.”

Today, two Swedish athletes, Emma Green Tregaro, a high jumper and former World Championship bronze medallist, and 200m and 400m runner Moa Hjelmer, both painted their nails in rainbow colours in a public show of support.

I just might do the same.