Google shows support for LGBT Olympians | Hacker News

Didn't Utah get the winter Olympics a few years ago ? :)

Utah, while prohibiting gay marriage, nevertheless still let gay people meet (gatherings), distribute information, and speak publicly about the topic.

This is absolutely false. From Wikipedia (with many, many, detailed citations and sources):

"Under the statute it is effectively illegal to hold any gay pride events, speak in defense of gay rights, or say that gay relationships are equal to heterosexual relationships."

You cannot hold a pride parade (a minor might see it); you cannot distribute brochures (a minor might read it); you cannot have a website (a minor might see it). The freedoms we take for granted in the West, limited though they may be, simply do not exist in Russia. Every single item that mentioned as something you can do in Utah is something you cannot do in Russia, by law. And that's not even touching on the more restrictive laws in many regions and cities, nor on the surge in hate crimes and other unofficial repression.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Russia#Bans_on_g... (Although really, just google it; there's tons of info.)

I realize the difference with Russia is that it is practically illegal for LGBT to exist but let's talk about the USA for a moment where 33 states refuse to consider legalizing gay marriage and a few are even testing of the idea of emergency suspending ALL marriages just so people who are gay cannot marry if they cannot be excluded separately.

There are still plenty of places in the USA where you could be killed for being gay, the difference is not by the state but by individuals.

So we are not exactly a shining beacon ourselves.

the difference is not by the state but by individuals.And therein lies the distinction. We still have a long way to go, but our laws are structured and being structured in a way that protects those rights. Even though some states might be trying to push back the tide of tolerance, the momentum is seriously in the direction of equal rights. Every country has idiots and bigots, but when a state sponsors such bigotry, then the light should be shined on those wrongs. Our ignoble idiots exonerate actions of legislators and leaders in Russia.

Did you know that in Russia you can't get fired for being gay? At the same time it is perfectly legal to do so in United States. When did it become legal in United States for gays to have sex? Kinda like in 2003...except 13 states have not repealed sodomy laws. By the way, sodomy is perfectly legal in Russia since 1993.

That's not exactly a relevant comparison. We're not talking about a Prop 8 or DOMA supporter lecturing Russia. We're talking about a Google using their enormous soapboax to do so in a fresh, defiant, and powerful way.

Google has been quite active in fighting for gay marriage within US, submitting amici briefs to the court cases, spending money on campaigns, and so forth...

From the white paper linked below-

"Since 1993 gay sex was made legal in Russia, in 12 US States gay sex is a crime."

Check out the Supremacy Clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause

"The supremacy of federal law over state law only applies if Congress is acting in pursuance of its constitutionally authorized powers."

Congress does not have an authority to govern sexual conduct. Just because enforcement of sodomy laws has been unpopular long before 2003, doesn't mean they don't exist.

...wow. You really don't understand how the US legal system works, do you?

Hint: The Supremacy Clause limits federal law; the product of the legislative branch. Lawrence v. Texas is court decision; the product of the judicial branch. That's like saying the second amendment requires the legalisation of marijuana because pot is a type of rifle. > That Russia has a reasonable political platform regarding its LGBT citizens?

Are you saying that this position can simply be disregarded out of hand? That strikes me as disrespectful and self-important. If nothing else it is non-conducive to any actual discussion on the matter - unless all you want is an echo chamber to reaffirm your preexisting positions on the matter.

> The topic was the Google Doodle showing support for LGBT people

Specifically in relation to the LGBT issues surrounding the Olympics, i.e., Russia's "anti-gay" laws. The Russian laws are very much a part of this topic. You're being disingenuous.

Absolutely I am. I don't need to share the evidence with you because, as a thinking and contributing member to these forums, I am sure you have accessed it yourself. Is there any reason I wouldn't discard an argument in favor of institutionalized racism? Or, more mildly, that institutionalized racism is a topic that is capable of being overblown?

The commenter called it "The LGBT Russia thing" and if that does not aptly sum up how trivial s/he perceives the topic to be, I don't know what does. "That human rights violation thing". Sorry, it doesn't fly with me.

I am not saying Russian laws are not a part of the topic. What I am saying is that characterizing the topic as being "overblown" by citing that paper is absolutely ludicrous.

EDIT: Wanted to add in this: How do you have 'rational discourse' when one side of the discussion is demonstrably pursuing nothing less than a human rights violation? It is like saying the Catholic church's sex scandal was 'overblown', or slavery, or any other human rights topic you can imagine. Where is the rational discourse there? How can "human rights violations" ever be an "overblown" topic?

I read the executive summary. It's great that Russia is making legal progress, and I mean that, but that doesn't change the situation on the ground where people are being beaten and arrested.

The paper also talks about statistics on how often gay people are beaten in Russia. United States is far worse in this respect. Further United States has a greater incarceration rate for gays than Russia.

I expected to get voted down. Not because what I posted didn't add value, but because this is the sort of topic I avoid in day to day conversation because it causes fights. There is too much emotion involved.

I am not saying there are not problems. I am saying that the media coverage of it is overblown, and because of that any rational thought or discussion about it is impossible. I provided a link to a document which as I pointed out elsewhere is well written, researched, provides citations and has some reasonable conclusions.

I understand it is hard to remove emotion from this sort of topics, in much the same way that discussions on climate change rapidly spiral out of control.

I had hoped that HN was beyond being a vote brigade and that posting it would produce some reasonable discussion on the topic.

No, it's not emotion in this case. The paper you linked begins with 100 repetitions of "did you know that the law actually is about children?". To which I have to answer: yes. And more importantly: yes, of course. That (hiding anti-gay legislation behind supposedly anti-pedophilia legislation) is a known strategy. It's actually one of the most disgusting things about this kind of legislation because it sends a message of "the state approves of using gay and pedophile interchangeably". Also the article seems to suggest that everyones afraid of all gay people getting arrested in Russia now. That's not at all the issue. What people (afaik) are afraid of is citizen-on-citizen violence against gay people getting an official stamp of approval. Because hunting pedophiles is protecting children. Please read the following section a couple of times:

> Public actions designed to promote pedophilia, sexual relations with minors,pederasty, lesbianism and bisexuality shall be prohibited.

You see what is missing? Gay. Lesbian? Bisexual? In there. Gay not. Why? The subtext is: it's implied by either pedophilia or pederasty. Yes, those are techniques you find also among American conservatives fighting gay rights. But you know what? Those images and stereotypes can be found all over the world, for centuries at least. But making laws that turn those stereotypes official? Yeah, that's a problem. Not the people being convicted by those laws. The precedence such laws create.

Sorry I disagree. This topic is highly emotional. That's why this thread was identified as a flame war by HN and why there is so much heated discussion.

I agree that there is lots of legislation which uses anti-pedophilia as a way of passing though "Won't somebody please think of the children!" works, and that's why it is used. I disagree with it of course, but yes I am aware of it.

Wait you are saying that by deliberately excluding "gay" then its implied? Sorry but that's a bit of a stretch which I disagree with.

Look, as far as I can tell this law can be boiled down to "We don't want people to force non-traditional marriage beliefs on minors". The specifics of it have issues. I can see how advocating for equality can be listed as a crime based on what's listed there though. Its 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" and "propaganda".

I agree with you and I want to add that in my view, the idea of something which is so clearly a front-and-center human rights issue, cannot easily be "overblown". Violence against people, discrimination, hate-based crimes - these are all things which rate fairly high on the "worth covering" scale of news media.

I have to ask, what did I write that was not reasonable? I can only assume "blown out of proportion" but I have yet to see evidence to the contrary that the media has not done this.

I'm sorry, this paper is bizarre and somewhat incoherent. magicalist goes into some of the problems with it, but the even larger problem that I see is that it seems to completely ignore the larger climate of intimidation and erasure by public officials, and look at "are specific people being harmed by this specific law", and I'm disinclined to trust its analysis even on that.

It's written by somebody who claims to be a journalist and managing editor yet has basically zero online presence in bylines or anything that I can find. Nor does he provide any contact information (apart from being from Chicago, which, good for him, I guess?). That makes very little sense.

In the US at large, LGBT rights and support for them has been growing, imperfectly and inconsistently, but growing. In Russia, it seems that there's been a backlash, and Putin and company are stirring up public sentiment against LGBT people. I'll take the word of Russians that things are actively getting worse:

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201402/being-gay-...

As I wrote elsewhere, ignore the conclusions. The facts presented are what I am interested in.

Yes, for every single argument there are two equally valid sides.

Right.

Give me a goddamned break.

Letting the media tell you what to think is also valid.

Right.

Give me a break.

Seriously, without getting snarky, how about you actually read the whitepaper. The person who wrote it is a lawyer and member of the LGBT community.

Thank you for linking to this. Finally someone taking the time to actually discuss the law and its consequences rather than rehashing the same breathless bs that is printed and repeated in the media.

Probably not many people are going to read a 72 page document about a topic when the media has already told us what to think. Sad but true.

Hey, people don't like to change opinion things that they already made up their minds on. Even on HN.

but thanks for linking that, seems to do a better job of providing better context of the LGBT situation in Russia.

I couldn't care less about anyone's sexual preference. But I find it wholly unfair that someone could change from a man to a woman and then compete against other women. That is something altogether different and should not be accepted in the Olympics in my opinion.

Just LG I think many people would say, actually.

I've come to the point where I think the acronym is silly. I think right now we are up to "LGBTQIAPK". I may be a little out of date on that.

The fact is, some of the issues between the groups in the acronym are shared and some aren't. At one point in time, banding together for them was probably useful if not necessary. Today I think each group would be better going it alone, as they all have very unique concerns.

Thank you for pointing this out. Saved me a lot of citations. You are, by the way, absolutely correct.

Sad that advocating that we treat people with respect and dignity is a political statement.

It doesn't affect your ability to search in any capacity, it's a picture of Google's logo in rainbow colors man.

Google has always shown doodles for most of it's history, and it has often had a 1 or 2 line subtitle for certain special events, emergencies, or holidays. Egads man! It's taking up approximately the same physical space it always had, comparing this to Yahoo's portal is ridiculous.

Also, if you use the Omnibox or other search boxes in the browser, you don't even see it. You only see this if you visit www.google.com

Google has been doing doodles for 15 years, since at least burning man in 1998. I would have thought most people would be over it by now.

It's a shame you can't bypass the google home page to get search results...

If your nickname refers to the Oliver Cromwell, I find it curiously at odds with your comment.

It refers to my real name combined with my wife's last name, but it's also a wink-and-nod to Oliver Cromwell and also 'Orwellian'.

Disturbing. I'll be keeping a close eye on you for signs of megalomania from now on. :-)

I'm trying to reclaim the name for positive associations. Many people don't even know how Oliver Cromwell was, I've even encountered British people who didn't know the history.

Anyway, there's actor James Cromwell. We need to band together and overcome the negative association with the good ole' Lord Protector.

(My grandfather used to tell me that he traced our ancestry and supposedly we are closely/directly descended, but I don't buy it. On the other hand, 23andme localized my ancestral DNA pretty strongly to the UK)

He was held responsible for a massacre 5 miles from where I was born. I did a school project on it and stood in a stone tower room where local women and children had gone for refuge but were discovered and slaughtered. Even closer to home was a spot where as Cromwell's army passed a man stood looking at them. His behaviour was viewed as impudent and he was summarily hanged. As a small kid he was the devil incarnate to me. Since then my view has become a lot less black and white but it's hard to shake off childhood associations entirely.

Why didn't you switch back when google dedicated an entire page to SOPA opposition? Is it only a problem when you don't favor the politics?

Fighting for LGBT rights shouldn't be considered a "political statement" - it should be considered a human rights issue.

FWIW, I'm glad Google sometimes makes political statements

Everything is a political statement to someone

It is discussed by people on 'political' tv != it is political.

You can politicize anything you want. But there is nothing inherently political about showing support for an LGBT human being. 'What neoconservatives want to make political issues of' is an entirely different matter.

This is a ludicrous rationale.

The moment something is merely mentioned in a law, it is henceforth to be considered under the header of "political topic"? Why? Because some political strategist (or worse, lobbyist) told you it was worth legislating for or against?

Your position can be summed up as "It is okay for Google to make Google Doodles about person X until whatever person X worked on became politicized".

Why was it okay for them to make a doodle about Simone de Beauvoir but not about your fellow LGBT human beings? This is the straw that broke the camel's back for you? Really?

I think you are. And what's the problem with political statements?

It is unfortunate that you are so willing to consume as 'politics' whatever topic political strategists have decided to include in their party's talking points.

It is fortunate that said political strategists chose LGBT rights and not, say, the legality of JavaScript. Because then your Google search would have been a moot point entirely, JS having been made "political".

Companies have social responsibilities. Supporting human rights is a positive thing.

Why is that a problem? If they want to send a message to a lot of people, their front page would be the best place, wouldn't it? God forbid you get a little bit of human rights activism with your search results...

There's a big difference between sending messages to text editor users and a logo on a website. Note that the logo is always there; it's just a little different this time.

Every google doodle is telling you google's stance on something. Google's doodle of MLK the other week told you their stance on black rights. How is this any different, except for the fact that gay rights make you uncomfortable?

What difference does it make? They're not changing your search results due to their stance.

I find it horrific that you consider your rights to be personally violated by your making use of a free, non-government-controlled, non-required public service.

I find it also horrific that you make a false parallel to text editors which also have demonstrable 'political' (as you've employed the term) positions.

I missed the deleted comment but I'm assuming it was something to do with Notepad++'s position on the Beijing Olympics?

Well the olympics already discriminates against mens in women competitions and vice versa. But anyway LGBT support or condamnations is pure bullshit and should not be in the Olympics.

To much sex talking. Just because there's so much sexual media doesn't mean that the LGBT should get their part of the attention on the news. We should go the other way and talk less about sex in the media.

LGBT rights is not a topic inherently related to sex or sexual media. Just want to make that distinction.

I guess it's not really your fault that you connect LGBT ot sex. Your society really did fail you.

So, in parallel, Christianity, since it advocates the religious ceremony of marriage between a man and a woman, must also be inherently sexual in nature.

I hope it is not too arrogant of me to assume that you are straight because I cannot fathom a gay person arriving at the conclusions you have arrived at.

Working under this assumption, would you say then, that any relationship you had with a member of the opposite sex was inherently sexual in nature?

Again, give me a break.

You can love someone and want to be with them for the rest of your life and not want to have sex with them. It really isn't a stretch of the imagination.

Sex is often the end result of emotional and physical attraction, but it's not the most important aspect.

Too bad encrypted.google.com doesn't have doodles.

What do you mean? It showed up for me on encrypted.google.com.

It's not a doodle, it's a footer.

And for those who for whatever reason cannot see it on Google, it reads: "The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play." –Olympic Charter

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7193857