Where have we been?

The 2014 Olympics should not be in Russia. I believe this. And it seems to be the quickly-arriving consensus among activists in light of the country's revolting anti-gay laws. This morning Stephen Fry joined the chorus calling for a boycott of the 2014 games.

Which is good – it's important to take stands. We should expect certain standards from countries hosting international events. But I have to wonder: has Russia ever met these standards?

Actually no, I don't have to wonder. It hasn't. Certainly not under Putin. The anti-gay laws are only the latest dish in a veritable buffet of human-rights abuses, which has included attacks on journalists and opposition figures, widespread police brutality, torture, racial discrimination, extralegal killings, censorship, and war crimes. We knew all of this when Sochi was selected, and yet it's taken until now for people to be up in arms.

This isn't the first time this has happened, either. The regimes hosting the Olympics have included:
• The Soviet Union in 1980. (To be fair, there was a boycott of these games, but it took an invasion of an entire country for that to happen.)
• Yugoslavia in 1984.
• China in 2008.

Add to this the numerous games in Britain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, all of whom committed grave atrocities in their colonial empires — and, it must be said, the United States, whose human rights record isn't exactly pristine.

The comparison that's been bandied about a lot is the 1936 Berlin Games, but we can actually cut the IOC some slack there: they selected Berlin as the host city in 1931, 2 years before the Nazis came to power. All these other hosts were selected with full knowledge and ample evidence of abuses. It would be almost inconsistent to deny Russia the games.

As an aside, I should note that I don't think we should have particularly severe political litmus tests when selecting Olympic hosts. The Games are about international unity, and the IOC is trying to look less exclusionary. They don't want to rock the boat.

Still, I think it's safe to say Russia did cross a line (or several), like China before it. But that line had been well-crossed in 2007 when they selected Sochi. The choice should have been scrutinized then. If we are going to expect standards on human rights, we need to be consistent about them.

LGBT rights are obviously important. But we need to remember that they are one set among many of important human rights. If we narrow our focus to one struggle, we run the risk of glossing over other struggles.