You're Totally Overreacting To Anti-Gay Law, Says Russian Official

Come here, caviar snowflakes. Did the big bad media tell you a scawy stowy about how Russia is planning on prosecuting gay and pro-gay Olympians using an archaic anti-gay propaganda law? Well, borscht dumpling, don’t you worry your pretty little kerchiefed head about that law. That’s just a media perpetuated by a Western media bent on Russian annihilation. TRUST ME I AM THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT NOW PLEASE COME HERE AND SPEND MONEY.

(Please read entire first paragraph in Russian accent. Aloud. Thank you.)

Russia’s now-infamous anti-gay propaganda law — the scariest thing to come out of Russia since Baba Yaga’s chicken leg house — has ruffled feathers internationally and spurred a flurry of misleading and occasionally contradictory statements from Russian government officials who are shocked— SHOCKED! — that the scale of backlash their homophobic hate-law prompted. With the Sochi Olympics just a depressingly small number of months away (Winter’s coming! And not in a fun Game of Thrones way!), officials are scrambling to control the PR damage the law has done by alternately defending it, downplaying it, and making sure that Russian athletes who dare speak out against it even a little bit change their tunes when publicly checked.

SkyNews outlines a depressing series of ~*mYsTeRiOuS*~ reversals and clarifications from athletes who spoke out against the law. They’ve also got an opposite-inspiring quote from the Chair of Russia’s Olympic committee, who seems to think that all this hubbub and hullabaloo is just an invention of the media. I just can’t with this guy.

“I think this is kind of an invented problem,” he said. “We don’t have a law banning non-traditional sexual relations, we have a different law.

“It is the informational protection of the young generation. We want to prevent the young generation, whose psyche has not been formulated.

“We want to protect them against drunkenness, drugs and non-traditional sexual relations. We want them to grow up and when they become adults they have to define what they want.”

Oh, well, when you put it that way, that’s… still incredibly shitty. That clarifying statement makes things literally 0% better.

Somebody in Russia better figure this shit out before early 2014, because if Russian fuckery means I have to turn off the Winter Olympics this February, I swear on the artistry and grace of Irina Slutskaya that I will never unstack a set of matryoshka dolls and fill each bottom half with vodka during a chess game again. I swear it on the bottle of Putinka that I wish was in my freezer.