Russian Pole-Vaulter Backs Scrutinized Law
MOSCOW — The intensifying debate over a new Russian law that has been criticized in the West as antigay moved into the realm of global sports on Thursday when one of Russia’s most prominent athletes publicly backed the measure even as competitors from other nations at the world track and field championships here criticized it.
Yelena Isinbayeva, the world champion pole-vaulter and the biggest star in Russian track and field, said she supported the new law, which bans “propaganda on nontraditional sexual relationships,” and she urged athletes to respect Russia’s views on sexuality.
The law, signed by President Vladimir V. Putin in June, has set off calls for protests at the Winter Olympics next year in Sochi, and even some demands for a boycott of the Games. While Mr. Putin and other supporters say the law is meant to protect children and does not discriminate against gays, critics say it is clearly intended to suppress homosexuality and could be used as a pretext to arrest anyone who appears to support gay rights.
The debate over the law has loomed over the track and field championships being held at Luzhniki Stadium here. The American runner Nick Symmonds on Tuesday dedicated his silver medal in the 800-meter race to gay friends, and several Swedish athletes, including the high-jumper Emma Green Tregaro, painted their nails in rainbow colors as a sign of solidarity with gay people.
Isinbayeva, who won her third world title on Tuesday and has drawn the biggest crowds this week, described such criticism as disrespectful. “It’s unrespectful to our country,” she said at a news conference on Thursday. “It’s unrespectful to our citizens because we are Russians. Maybe we are different than European people, than other people from different lands. We have our law, which everyone has to respect.”
She also described the legislation as reflecting the legitimate social and cultural views of Russia. “It’s my opinion also,” she said. “If we all to promote, you know to do all this stuff on the street, we are very afraid about our nation, because we consider ourselves like normal, standard people. We just live boys with women, and women with boys.”
She added, “It comes from history.”
Isinbayeva’s comments seemed certain to further inflame a debate that has led to boycotts of Russian vodka by gay bars in Western Europe and North America, and comparisons of the Winter Games in Sochi to the Summer Games in Nazi Germany in 1936.
Symmonds replied on Thursday: “It blows my mind that such a young, well-traveled, 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.”
Nick Davies, a spokesman for the I.A.A.F., track and field’s governing body, sought to avoid taking sides. “The I.A.A.F. constitution underlines our commitment to the principle of nondiscrimination in terms of religious, political or sexual orientation,” Davies said in a statement. “Allied to this is our belief in free expression as a basic human right, which means we must respect the opinions of both Green Tregaro and Isinbayeva.”
The widening worldwide controversy over the propaganda law has prompted officials from the International Olympic Committee and from FIFA, which chose Russia as host of the 2018 World Cup, to demand clarifications from the Kremlin about the law, and assurances that gay athletes and fans will not face any mistreatment.
This week, protesters held a candlelight vigil outside the Russian Consulate in Montreal, and an American gay rights group, Athlete Ally, sought to step up pressure on the I.O.C. on Thursday by demanding that Madrid be chosen as the site of the 2020 Summer Olympics because of Spain’s record on protecting gay rights.
Critics have said that the anti-propaganda law amounts to government-sanctioned homophobia and is out of sync with Russia’s push to host major international events. In response, some Russian officials noted that homosexuality is not illegal here, unlike in Qatar, host of the 2022 World Cup, or Dubai, which is competing with Russia for World Expo 2020.
Defenders of the law have also accused the West of hypocrisy, noting that Britain adopted a law nearly identical to the Russian legislation in 1987 and that the United States has its own history of legislation restricting gay rights, including the Defense of Marriage Act, which only this year was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
Isinbayeva’s comments immediately made her the law’s most prominent defender, but opinion polls have shown that she is hardly alone, with some 88 percent of the Russian public supporting it. Her call for respect of Russia’s sovereign rights put her squarely in the camp of Mr. Putin, who often makes the same demand in many different contexts.
“When we arrive to different cultures, we try to follow their rules,” Isinbayeva said on Thursday. “We are not trying to set our rules over there. We just try to be respectable. And also we ask everyone to be respectful to our place, to our culture, to our people.”
Isinbayeva, who has said she plans to stop competing, at least temporarily, because she wants to start a family, received her gold medal at a ceremony on Thursday night. She sang Russia’s national anthem, teared up, and kissed her medal, and then continued singing. As the song ended, she wiped her eyes.
At the news conference earlier in the day, she urged that politics not mar the Sochi games. “I’d like that people not combine the Olympic movement with such problems as nontraditional relationships or something else,” she said. “These are two different things. They do not have to mix.”
Other athletes, however, said they felt compelled to speak out against the Russian legislation. Symmonds, in a statement after his second-place finish in the 800-meter race, said, “As much as I can speak out about it, I believe that all humans deserve equality as however God made them.”
Kevin Borlee, a relay runner from Belgium, praised Green Tregaro for the statement she made by painting her nails. “What’s sure is that if Emma does this and shows this to the world in a sport like ours where many people are watching it can open the eyes of many people in Russia,” Borlee said. “I think it’s something that is strong in their culture here, and I think it was a very good idea Emma had.”
He said that Isinbayeva very likely felt an obligation to stand up for Russia. “She’s from here,” he said. “There are pressures and perhaps she doesn’t want to put distance between herself and the ideas of her country.”
Matthew Hughes, a Canadian steeplechaser, said that athletes should feel free to express their political views and be open about their sexual orientation. “I think it’s good for athletes that if they have a real strong opinion to voice it; I don’t think they should feeling coming into these games that they have to hide anything.”
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