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Comment by hugofirth | Hacker News Reader

It is odd - there was uproar around the Russian propaganda laws regarding Homosexual relationships running up to the winter olympics (and rightly so! I am not suggesting otherwise). Yet, I (who, perhaps arrogantly, consider myself fairly well informed) had absolutely no idea that homosexuality is illegal in India. This is wtf-worthy.

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This was the case in something like 15 us States until the Supreme Court struck it down.... In 2003. (far more States are included if you go back just another decade)

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_Sta...

Not only that, but homosexuality is actually completely legal in Russia.

The law that everyone was in uproar about is that in Russia you're not allowed to promote non-traditional sexual relationships.

Yet in what many claim is a 'free' country (India), homosexuality it outlawed outright.

Funny how propaganda works.

What is a free country?

You can pick your criteria but please try to make it adequate and generic Then name one free country on this planet.

Such media campaigns are only for enemies of the US, not for allies like India or Saudi Arabia. (where the punishment for having homosexual intercourse is death by beheading)

I am tired of all similar conspiracy theories posted the last week in .se comment fields with very bad Swedish. I am going to answer this.

If Russia was mistreated in Western media, Putin would have been burned in effigy every day for a decade in every city in the west over e.g. this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War_crimes_and_t...

"On October 21, 1999, a series of Russian ballistic missile strikes on central Grozny killed at least 137 people, mostly civilians, and injured hundreds. The missiles hit the city's main marketplace, a maternity hospital and a mosque."

And other points listed on that page, which has never really been discussed in western media.

But I guess Wikipedia, HRW et al are in on Obama's homosexual conspiracy? :-)

If it comes to being an ally and India has to choose between US and Russia, is it that hard to guess who it will choose? You can also sample the latest example.

It's a matter of how things are moving.

Homosexuality has been illegal in India. No change no uproar. Russia's laws have moved things bavkwards.

Look at what happened in Uganda.

India got quite a lot of criticism in the press for this at the time, and rightly so, but it dropped out of the news after a month or two because there was nothing new happening. Expect more press attention when there's news. (I doubt the Russian laws would've gotten so much attention if the Russian government didn't continually do things that drew attention to them.)

It's really incompetence.

The issue went to the supreme court and they said this matter is for the legislature to decide.

The good thing (unlike Russia) is that almost everyone from the ruling government, media, public, etc want this law abolished.

Sadly that is not true. The right-wing party, that will most likely win the upcoming elections, will never approve an amendment to change this through parliament. The judge that reverted the supreme court decision if fully aware of this and it was a political decision on his side.

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