Quote:
Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed
What would be the end goal of a boycott?
I suggest the end goal should be to change people's thinking, not to change the laws, and especially not change the laws by force.
Forcing the law to change doesn't change how the people think, and may further entrench their thinking.
I think the best protest would be for athletes to behave exactly as they could wish to behave anywhere else. Perhaps you have an incident, but international pressure wouldn't let Russia actually jail anyone. However, what would happen, it that Russia would embarrass itself, and that kind of embarrassment is what could change people's thinking over there.
In short, they have to come to see that they are wrong. The Olympics are a good forum for change, but real change won't come with a boycott. You can't force people to change.
As an aside, I suspect that a boycott would lead to some counter boycotts at the same time or in the future. Countries that are firmly against homosexuality could very likely boycott us. Do we care? Perhaps not, but it is an extra wrinkle to the whole situation.
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I think that the point that we're missing is that the Russian's simply don't care about external influence, if they did they would have softened their stance on Syria for example.
Russian's as a whole very much have a bunker mentality, That didn't change when the cold war ended, they just softened things to get money under Gorby and then Yeltsin. But because they are a nation that has frankly been abused by the foreign policies of other countries for ever they're not going to easily change their minds.
Look at that ##### Doll or whatever it is situation, tremendous international pressure was put on the Russian government to not prosecute and then to release those girls and they didn't relent.
America has put tremendous pressure on the Russians over Syria and over the Snowden situation and in both cases instead of relenting the Russians actually flipped up their middle finger and hardened their resolve and in Snowden's case went from trying to get him out of the country to letting him stay.
To me there are three sticks when it comes to the homosexuality laws and the Olympics
T.V. rights - a Tremendous amount of money flows into Russia's cash drawers from that. That's already been paid and advertising has already been sold. I doubt that the television carriers are going to back out, it would be a massive hit to them. I doubt that the advertisers will withdraw either. Even with a boycott in effect you will still get millions of viewers world wide.
Sponsor rights - I believe there is a split between the hosting nation and the Olympics. Again this has already been paid and the courts would side with the Olympics and Russia if agreements were broken and the money wouldn't be refunded If anything a boycott would hurt the sponsors who are the innocent parties in this whole thing as they paid long before the laws came into effect.
Tourism - aha you say, this is money that goes right into Russian pockets and the Olympics are the grand tamale of tourism. So people stay away right, streets are abandoned little stuffed bears go unsold. Waiters and bartenders look sadly at their empty restaurants as a tumble weed skips slowly past their door to some kind of sad 80's diva rock song right. Wrong, as much as homosexual rights has moved to the forefront does anyone honestly think that people will stay away in droves? It wouldn't matter, Animal Rights groups have been screaming for a boycott of the Stampede for years and animal rights is a pretty popular cause, cute little bunnies and horsies and the such, yet Calgary still gets millions upon millions in tourism revenues each and every year. Going to the Olympics for a vast majority of people is a bucket list item. They'll still make bank.
So how about boycotting Russian products? Well it would hurt average John . . . sorry Ivan Q public . . . errr Publinskiev.
There isn't much that can be done. maybe at a grass roots level. A hug in or whatever and being willing to pay the price of doing it in downtown Moscow. Or a athlete carrying a sign or wearing a rainbow pin. Or a Visa ad featuring two hot lesbians making out.
However if that kind of protest happens on Russian soil I have my doubts that they'll back down.
Just my 2 cents.