Dear Editor: I write in reference to Trevor Lautens' Aug. 17 column, We Shout Across Seas of Misunderstanding.
Lautens suggests that the Western world is imposing its culture on Russia. He writes that Westerners should focus on their own social problems of obesity, drugs, and economic problems such as consumer debt and youth unemployment. Perhaps Lautens is not aware that these problems are endemic in Russia.
Lautens' right-wing, speeding train of Kafkaesque argument is off the track of logic. He compares the less-than-desirable but controllable societal constructs of obesity and consumer debt with the uncontrollable biology of homosexuality. I am not aware of any Western consumers being publicly flogged for credit card debt as has been suggested should happen in Siberia to samesex Russians for holding hands. Lautens also references a 1987 version of the Oxford Companion of the Mind to which he attributes a quote of homosexuality being "a perversion in the technical sense" as a modern statement, failing to disclose the quote originates with Alfred Adler who made it in the 1920s, nearly a century past.
The anti-gay laws in Russia have nothing to do with culture, Western or otherwise. These laws were designed to create a massive campaign of hate against the GLBT community to distract Russian citizens from the real social and economic problems they face. The anti-gay laws in Russia are based on the anti-Jewish laws of Germany in the 1930s.
I support moving the Winter Olympics from Sochi to Vancouver, but not to punish anyone. It is my position that Russia cannot provide the legal and administrative infrastructure to protect the safety of athletes and visitors for simply expressing love which comes naturally in all cultures.
Hazen S. Colbert
North Vancouver
