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Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
Let me put this question back to you though. While a lot of countries have done great things with equal rights for Gays etc, is it an important enough issue to completely screw up foreign relations and policy with Russia who right now could be classed as an ascendant world power. Same question with China who owns almost every country in the world, are homosexual rights and human rights in China a big enough priority nationally to potentially screw up relations with China?
Its easy enough to stand up and scream yes, and in an ideal world it would be the right thing to do. To punish a nation for a major transgression, but there are countless other factors.
Its up to the individual nations, but for the U.S. or Canada or UK or whatever to boycott would have major diplomatic repercussions.
It would come down to the athlete level if they want to do something. However they would probably need to get approval from their nations Olympic Committee.
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That's really the thing I'm struggling with myself, at what point does it tip to being enough of an issue to use the Olympics as a foreign relations tool, and if it would be effective to do so. While I consider gay rights to be an important issue I don't know that it's the hill you'd want to die on, but that leaves me asking what would reach that level, and I'm not coming up with a definitive answer. Like you said, in an ideal world you take these countries to task for what are some serious abuses, but there is much more to consider than that.
I think the onus falls on viewers to put the pressure where it will actually be felt, the pockets of sponsors. If Visa gets enough pressure maybe future games take things like this into consideration. Athletes have the ability to be the public face of that pressure. I'd love to see an American athlete make a statement against Russian policies, which would be a brave move seeing as the Russians could certainly take action against them.