Stephen Fry’s bid to yank Olympics from Russia likely to fall on deaf ears

Stephen Fry's call to yank the 2014 Winter Olympic Games out of Russia will almost certainly fall on deaf ears at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and participating nations.

The openly gay British writer and actor, best know for his star turn as Jeeves, and the Black Adder series with longtime collaborator Hugh Laurie, published an open letter on his web site Wednesday urging the IOC to take away the Games because of the Russian government's crackdown against homosexuals.

The message has also gone out to Fry's six million followers on Twitter.

The Putin-controlled Duma (a legislative assembly) passed a law forbidding "propaganda" supporting "non-traditional" sexual orientation — gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered (LGBT). The legislation, which essentially makes it illegal to be openly gay or to advocate for rights for LGBT people, threatens jail terms for violators.

Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko has warned anyone attending the Olympics near the Black Sea resort town of Sochi could be jailed or deported.

Opponents see the law basically as declaring open season on LGBT people for Russia's bigots. International opposition has swelled to include boycotts of Russian vodka and calls for nations not to show up in Sochi next year.

Many, including gay athletes, reject the idea of boycotting the Games, arguing its better to show up, win medals and express support for Russia's LGBT community while there.

[ Related: NDP wants tougher stance on Russia, but no Sochi boycott ]

In his appeal, Fry likened the Russian policy to the Nazis' treatment of Jews, noting the Olympic movement turned a blind eye in attending the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

"The Olympic movement at that time paid precisely no attention to this evil and proceeded with the notorious Berlin Olympiad, which provided a stage for a gleeful Führer and only increased his status at home and abroad," Fry wrote.

"Putin is eerily repeating this insane crime, only this time against LGBT Russians. Beatings, murders and humiliations are ignored by the police. Any defence or sane discussion of homosexuality is against the law."

Fry brushed aside the idea that the Olympics should be above politics.

"Let us realise that in fact, sport is cultural. It does not exist in a bubble outside society or politics. The idea that sport and politics don’t connect is worse than disingenuous, worse than stupid. It is wickedly, wilfully wrong."

Moving the Olympics from Sochi to some other venue — Fry suggested previous sites such as Salt Lake City and Lillyhammer Norway — would send a message to Russia that its persecution of LGBT people would not be tolerated, he wrote.

[ Related: Star Trek's Sulu gets behind online petition for Sochi Games move to Vancouver ]

"For there to be a Russian Winter Olympics would stain the movement forever and wipe away any of that glory. The Five Rings would finally be forever smeared, besmirched and ruined in the eyes of the civilised world."

Fry's letter also contained a personal appeal to British Prime Minister David Cameron, whom he praised for pushing through legislation on gay marriage.

"In the end I believe you know when a thing is wrong or right," Fry wrote to Cameron. "Please act on that instinct now."

Fry is getting sympathy but little actual traction.

"We are working closely with the IOC and the BOA [British Olympic Association] to ensure that the Games take place in the spirit of the Olympic Charter and are free from discrimination," Cameron's spokeswoman told BBC News.

As for the Russian law itself, Cameron's office said in a statement that the prime minister raised the issue during a meeting with Putin in June, The Associated Press reported.

“We remain greatly concerned about the growing restrictions on LGBT freedoms in Russia and have repeatedly raised our concerns, including at the 2013 UK-Russia Human Rights dialogue in May,” the statement said.

In a sneering commentary for the Telegraph, blogger Brendan O'Neill dismissed Fry's appeal as hypocritical and his Holocaust analogy as insulting to Jews.

"Putin is not rounding up gays, putting them in disgusting ghettos, and plotting to execute every last one of them, as Hitler did with the Jews," O'Neill wrote. "Mr Fry is exploiting the greatest crime in human history in order to give his campaign against Putin some extra clout."

It should be pointed out that while he condemns Fry for an ignorance of history, O'Neill seems unaware that the Holocaust was the culmination of a policy that began with the Nazi Nuremberg Laws, passed in 1933, which systematically excluded Jews from German society and sanctioned open violence against them.

The Nazis also consigned gays to concentration camps, it should be noted.

[ Related: Russia’s anti-gay laws and Sochi 2014 latest example of Olympics ignoring human rights ]

The IOC has been criticized for its lukewarm condemnation of the law and for not using a threat to remove the Games from Sochi to force Russia to back away from it.

"The Olympic charter calls sport a human right that should be practiced 'without discrimination of any kind,' Jere Longman wrote in the New York Times this week.

"But all the indignation the IOC could muster about Russia’s new antigay law was a statement saying the Olympic Committee would 'oppose in the strongest terms any move that would jeopardize this principle.' "

There will be no Pride House at Sochi, unlike the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games or the 2012 Summer Games in London, the Times noted.

Given the unlikelihood of punishing Russia by snatching away the Games, others have called for novel ways to penalize the country.

In a commentary on MSNBC, Cyd Zeigler noted the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics by the United States, Canada and other western countries, didn't force the Soviet Union to withdraw from Afghanistan, which it invaded the previous year.

Zeigler said the IOC could loosen the rule that bans any demonstration of a political, religious or racial nature from the Games. IOC president Jacques Rogge set a precedent in 2008 when he allowed participants in the Beijing Games to express their views on Tibet, he said.

[ Related: Fresh doubts about Russia’s anti-gay law still won’t lead to Sochi Olympic boycott ]

Even better would be a ban on the Russian Olympic team participating in its own Games, Zeigler suggested, adding the IOC banned apartheid South Africa from completing for 28 years.

"Let Russia, as host, watch the games from the sidelines as 200 other nations slide across the ice in Sochi," Zeigler argued.