GAY-RIGHTS ADVOCATES PREPARE FOR THE SOCHI OLYMPICS

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http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2014/01/gay-rights-advocates-prepare-for-the-sochi-olympics.html



Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Sochi this past weekend to inspect and oversee preparations for the Winter Olympic Games, which are now just a month away. He has made no secret of his plan to use the Games as a showcase for modern Russia. International human-rights and L.G.B.T. activists, however, are focussed on raising awareness of Russia’s new anti-gay law—which makes it a crime to discuss L.G.B.T. issues in front of minors—and the bigger human-rights violations that it seems to encourage.

The Academy Award-winning producer and gay-rights advocate Bruce Cohen recently attended a screening in St. Petersburg, at the Side by Side L.G.B.T. International Film Festival, of his 2008 film “Milk,” which is about the life of San Francisco city supervisor and gay-rights pioneer Harvey Milk.

“The people are smart and sophisticated. And charming and funny. And they dress well, and the music’s good, and the food is good, and the vodka’s good, and the hotels are beautiful, and the wireless is perfect,” Cohen observed about Russia. “It presents the appearance of being a free, democratic society. But, boy oh boy, it’s not. It’s all a very calculated and clever appearance that the government has worked hard to present. “

Cohen was accompanied at the St. Petersburg screening by Dustin Lance Black, who won an Oscar for the film’s screenplay, and Gus Van Sant, its director, who told me that Russia was “dumbfounding, hard to figure out,” and that people seemed forced into “leading double lives.” (All three men are gay.)