Sochi Olympics: Why picking on gays has backfired so horribly for Vladimir Putin

After all the fuss, the billions spent, the calls for boycotts and so on, the Sochi Winter Olympics will begin next week. Given the incredibly low expectations, the Russian Games may even be judged a success — as long as the weather stays cold and no terrorist attack takes place. But Vladimir Putin should not be too smug, because his broader campaign against homosexuality has backfired spectacularly.

The Russian President’s decision to sign a law prohibiting ‘the propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors’ last summer probably made sense to him at the time. This measure, along with one that bans the adoption of Russian children not just by homosexuals but also by heterosexuals residing in countries that have gay marriage on the books, is reportedly supported by 74 per cent of Russians. And Putin has for years been able to get away with much worse: invading (and still occupying) Georgia, fuelling Assad’s murder machine, rigging elections, jailing journalists and opposition activists. Other than the odd bleat of protest from the European Union or US State Department, all that has had few serious consequences.

But Putin can’t have anticipated the magnitude of worldwide outrage that would pour forth in response to his gay propaganda law. It has earned Moscow more uniformly negative media coverage than practically anything Putin has done since assuming power in 2000. Anti-Kremlin gay protests have taken place across the world. There’s now a long list of foreign dignitaries not going to Sochi. It will be the first time since 2000 that America has not sent a president, first lady, vice president or former president to an Olympics. The presidents of Germany, France and Moldova, and the prime ministers of Canada and Belgium, have also let it be known that they won’t be going. No one admits that the decision was politically motivated, but there are small signs that western leaders tacitly support Stephen Fry, who called for ‘an absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics’.