Okay. I’m going to start with the link and the headline that went with it: RUSSIA: Court Acquits Madonna Of Threatening National Birth Rate By Promoting Homosexuality

Hard not to laugh, isn’t it?

The short version is that “homosexual propaganda”, and the promotion thereof is now a crime in St. Petersburg (they’re considering expanding this law to the federal level) and nine claimants brought charges against Madonna for voicing her opinions in public at a concert there.

It’s actually very tempting to just quote the entire Joe My God article here and point and laugh, but it stops being funny when you see what they considered “promoting homosexuality”. Here’s what Madonna said at a concert in August,

I am here to say that the gay community and gay people here and all around the world have the same rights – to be treated with dignity, with respect, with tolerance, with compassion, with love

This is promotion? Saying that gay people are human beings with rights?

I’m pretty sure in one of these blog posts I said that I expected anyone’s rights to be respected, up to and including Space-Zombie Hitler. Was I promoting Undead-Space-Nazism by doing so?

Well, as the headline says, the judge didn’t think so. But it really bothers me that people thought they could win this suit, and though that it was worth even trying to win.

From the Guardian article:

The claimants argued that Madonna’s performance would adversely affect Russia’s birthrate and therefore its ability to maintain a proper army. They cited posts on the Facebook page condemning the law as proof she had prior knowledge of the potential criminality of expressing herself.

It’s one of those instances where I’m tempted to say it’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard, except every time I say that the words are still hanging in the air when I hear something even worse.

Seriously, Russia, this is a bad law. There’s no such thing as “homosexual propaganda”, even in San Francisco you’ll never see a poster saying “Are you feeling dissatisfied with all that boring straight sex you’ve been having? Why not try gay?” or “You too can be gay and enjoy all the wonders of being a social pariah with reduced civil rights and an increased chance of being murdered” or “Real men suck cock.” Homosexuality is not a cult, people are not “recruited” into it, and the “gay agenda” is nothing more nor less than the recognition of their human rights to dignity and the life and love of their choosing.

And saying that “gay propaganda” would change the birth & divorce rates is layered stupid. We have to dig down to expose the full vein of stupidity involved in it.

No amount of “propaganda” will make a straight person gay, or a gay person straight. Sexuality is apparently really, really complicated, but whatever criteria makes a person attractive to you is not realistically going to change. Ever. You are more likely to spontaneously change sex than to change sexual preference, and that’s not even hyperbole.

So it’s stupid on its face. But also, think of the implications there.

• They seem to be seriously implying that gay sex is so mind-blowingly awesome that people will get divorced and never have children so they can spend all their time in bed with their gay lover(s).
• They seem to think that few people actually want children, but only have them because Russia is apparently a desolate wasteland without any form of contraception and children are just the price of having sex.
• They seem to think that the population exists to serve the army. I’d have sworn it was the other way around.
• They seem to believe that Madonna is powerful enough to statistically alter Russia’s population by saying “gay people have the same rights”.
• They seem to think that recognizing gay rights isn’t a question of recognizing human rights.

Look, I realize that there are areas that I’m just never going to see eye to eye with these people. I mean, one of the claimants said that Madonna’s concert would make the divorce rate go up. Now, imagine being gay suddenly became totally socially acceptable with no stigma whatsoever, and all the people living a lie in the closet came out, including those who’d gone so far as to get married. The divorce rate goes up, sure, but my question is why is this a bad thing? These hypothetical divorces are people getting out of a situation they could never be happy in.

Doesn’t human happiness matter?

The nine claimants, and the Russian conservatives who back them, are people. As such they deserve rights and dignity and compassion. I truly do believe this, and I wonder if any of those arrogant vapid hateful small-minded self-centered regressive shit-brained worthless fucking assholes would think that I’m promoting them or their cruelty here by saying so.

Everybody has rights. Everybody matters. Every person. All.

(This message brought to you by Tarvi’s Omni-Ganda, the propaganda service promoting everything)