Brian Heiss has worked as a consultant, journalist and writer focused on diversity issues and last week published perhaps one of the most thorough deconstructions and analysis, certainly the only analysis of this kind ofthe topic, (in the form of a white paper) of Russia’s supposed ‘anti-gay law’ that had worldwide coverage and exposure despite many not even appearing to have read the law.
As well as explaining and publishing the full text of the law in English, obtained from a professional translator, which was not available anywhere else online (despite the wide scale media coverage) for the public to see for themselves, Heiss goes into incredible detail of the US media coverage of the law, including how it was presented as ‘breaking news’ despite being up to 24 days after it had been passed on 29 June 2013.
Heiss researched and began to write the report in an attempt to prove Adam Curry and John C Dvorak of the No Agenda show wrong in their analysis of the law, which went against the narrative created by the US and UK mainstream media which claimed Russia was banning homosexuality and that LGBT groups could now legally persecuted and attacked. On the show Adam Curry claimed the law was nothing of the sort and was about banning the ‘propaganda’ of ‘non-traditional sexual relationships’ to children and nothing more - not legalising the arrest and imprisonment of homosexuals.
This report is a must read for anyone interested in civil rights and equality, as well as anyone who has seen the news media’s portrayal of Russia as supposedly being incredibly anti-gay and discriminatory, especially as Heiss makes many well-cited comparisons between the rights LGBT individuals have in the US compared to in Russia. For example, unlike in Russia you can be fired from your job in the US simply for being LGBT (see chapter 4 in the report).
One must also question why the news media went down this route of villifying Russia and Putin despite not even reading what was in the law. Perhaps John C Dvorak’s commentary is somewhat close to the truth:
The entire anti-gay and anti-Putin propaganda stemming solely from the US government may relate to the embarrassing fact that Ed Snowden is using Russia as a sanctuary from the American government. This is a tremendous humiliation to the US State Department. Creating this false narrative about anti-gay Russian sentiment is part of a seemingly never-ending attack on Russia and its Olympics. The Russians must be punished for disobedience. Putin needs to be humiliated.
This is not to say any legislation about banning the encouragement of ‘alternative lifestyles’ is acceptable in any way, but the fact that the words ‘gay’, ‘homosexual’, ‘sexual orientation’, ‘same sex’ or any other LGBT identifier does not even appear anywhere in the legislation is extremely interesting. The fact that the news media, in all its hours of coverage and hundreds of news articles on the law did not even mention this is worrying and suggests that none of these reporters even read the report or a translated version and simply jumped on the bandwagon and joined in with the condemnation without even reading the original source.
The 129-page report, complete with citations for further reading and fact checking, can be found here. This is true journalism.