Quote:
Originally Posted by polak
I'm done arguing cause you guys simply refuse to acknowledge that a Canadian boycott will accomplish absolutely nothing.
It's not just the ability to compete in a sporting event. To say that is demeaning to what our athletes do. Imagine if you worked all your life to become a doctor. Missed out on a social life in your youth, studied for hours on end, every day, never had time for anything besides school and then all of the sudden you were banned from being a doctor. That's what your doing to these athletes in order to tell Russia that you don't agree with their law. Wow good job. Gold star for you.
You want to feel good as Canadian in support of gay rights? Go protest in russia during the olympics. Don't sacrifice others life long ambitions so you can pat yourself on the back for doing nothing.
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I think a closer analogy would be that all of a sudden someone told you couldn't be a doctor because they don't allow dogs on the subway or something equally random. I understand that the human rights should take precedence over games, but from sports has nothing to do with gay rights, so why should the athletes suffer for it? I also agree that a country like Canada not going would do little to nothing. Now if Canada, USA, UK, Japan, etc... all boycotted that would be different, but the issue just isnt large enough to organize something like that.
I agree that a boycott wouldn't do much, and I think that a better method would be to have some type of badge on the uniforms or something. Maybe there will be a gay athlete that will do something to stand up for it (which would probably be the best case scenario for gay rights). Honestly if a gay athlete won a gold and did something on the podium to express themselves, and then something terrible happened to them as a result, it would do nothing but fuel the fire for gay rights. Obviously that would be terrible, but history tells us that society needs something shocking to cause mass shifts in ideals. And even then some won't change. I know gay people have had a rough go with this, but other groups have suffered similar treatment and it takes a long time for these things to wane out. It's coming, soonish, but a few more ignorant idiots need to die off