Russia says drivers must not have 'sex disorders'

[Lord Happy Toast]

And in much less reported on news, Reuters and the Daily Beast have both reported further updates on this topic, and they largely confirm my suspicions that the initial report was largely sensationalist hype.

[SunlightOnTheGarden]

Or that Putin is backtracking. Basically, Russia does treat such things as disorders, so it's not necessarily wrong to assume that when people with mental disorders are attacked, the primary target is the LGBTQ community. Very rarely do laws directly target those communities explicitly - even when homosexuality was illegal in the UK, people weren't explicitly charged with being gay. They were done under 'gross indecency', which was a legal phrase primarily to deal with perfectly legitimate targets, like flashers.

Much more likely that Putin originally thought this would be a nice little subtle vote winner, and now he's facing massive international pressure, at a time when he's already struggling to appear statesmanlike on the world stage, so a quiet little rebuttal and a claim the law was misunderstood or was drafted far too quickly will come out.

In a sense, I think the 'sensationalist hype' might actually have done something.

[Fire & Rain]

It seems like every other government distracts its people with something really bigoted, discriminating and sometimes violent and inhumane so that people won't pay attention to things like politics, corruption and injustice. It's like distracting kids with a doll but in a terrible way.