We are on the cusp of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. I'm not generally a sports fan, but there is something about a nation coming together to support the most dedicated athletes we have to offer that really speaks to me. It's not just me, however, because you'd be hard pressed to find anything else to watch during the Olympics. Trust me, I've tried. As a nation, we rally around and support the Michael Phelpses and Gabby Douglases of America, because over the course of a few days, we watch them put years and years of training – intense, highly focused and dedicated training – into what they are doing on the mat or in the pool. When they succeed, it feels like we succeed.
That being said, it's time to address the rainbow-colored elephant in the room. I will not be watching the Olympics this year. Not because I think we need to boycott, or because I think that the network actually cares what one person who isn't watching has to say, and definitely not because I don't think these athletes haven't worked hard, but because the Sochi Olympic Games are bigger than individual athletes.
The time for a corporate and international boycott has come and gone. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) needed to have condemned Russia's anti-gay laws before they were enacted. Similarly, the corporate sponsors, like Coca-Cola, needed to have made clear that they did not want to be associated with active discrimination before these laws were enacted. The time to put the pressure on Russia to re-think its policies has come and gone. Russia is just shy of criminalizing homosexuality and there is nothing we can do about it.
To give you all a little history lesson, we have seen this before. Germany hosted the 1936 Olympic Games under Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime. At the time, the Nazi's anti-Semitic, white supremacist views were a known fact; however, the IOC decided not to boycott the games, some claiming that the Olympics were not about politics, but rather about the athletes. The United States went on to participate in the 1936 Olympic Games, and shortly thereafter--only once millions had been killed in a brutal genocide--became fully engaged in World War II. This isn't a matter of politics. It's a matter of humanity. For every Olympian who has trained hard for her chance to make it on the U.S team, there are thousands of lesbian, gay, transgender, and bisexual, Russian citizens oppressed by their own government.
Aside from the matter of principle, there is no way I would be able to stomach watching anyone walk away with a medal and not think of the legion of LGBT youth in Russia without a voice, wishing someone would be on their side. While I will never understand what it means for an athlete to train years for something only to see it not be realized, I do know what it feels like to not have a voice. I do know what it feels like to be looked over, and feel insignificant in the larger picture. For that reason I can't, and I won't let this go. Taking a stand comes with great sacrifice, which is why people often chose to walk away in the face of injustice. Are all those years of training and hard work worth knowing that your success came at the expense of someone else's freedom?
Only 78 years separate the Sochi Games and the Berlin Games. As you sit at your television, watch the opening ceremonies, and take in the picture that Russia wants to paint for you, ask yourself if you would be doing the same thing if this was Nazi Germany's Olympic Games. If the answer is no, then ask yourself what the difference is. There shouldn't be one. We shouldn't need for a genocide to be our call to action. When someone is oppressed, we need to help make it right. Not because that person needs saving, but because it's the right thing to do. Sitting idly by while Russia puts on a show on the backs of their LGBT citizens only makes it okay for the rest of the world to do the same. The message we are sending is a powerful one: the United States will look the other way in the face of oppression if doing so prevents us from feeling uncomfortable.
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