Mayor Of Sochi Olympic Village Defends Anti-Gay Law With Anti-Trans Joke

The honorary mayor of Sochi's Olympic Village is defending Russia's anti-gay laws, which she voted for in the DUMA.

Svetlana Zhurova, a gold medal-winning figure skater and lawmaker in the Russian parliament who voted for the bill last June, said in an interview on the independent Russian TV channel Dozhd that she “voted to stop people promoting it to minors.” Zhurova claimed that many European politicians who oppose the law had told her in private that they actually supported it and that Russian celebrities who support the law had been told by their sponsors to stay quiet. She added, “I just think they shouldn’t show a cartoon on TV — excuse me, I have two boys — where a king loves another king.” She went on to tell a “joke” about the law: “If someone says he’s Napoleon, he’ll be taken straight to the appropriate institution. If he says he’s a woman, then basically nothing happens to him, he’s fighting for his rights.”

Charming.