In passing and in contrast to Google I noticed that Yahoo's display of Dilbert cartoons at <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/comics/dilbert-slideshow/" rel="nofollow">http://news.yahoo.com/comics/dilbert-slideshow/</a> shows a different cartoon to the main Dilbert site <a href="http://www.dilbert.com/strips/" rel="nofollow">http://www.dilbert.com/strips/</a> for today. Is this an editorial decision or just a cock up do you think?
How does a law that bans gay propaganda to kids have anything to do with Olympics? They don't ban gay sportsmen or anything, I don't see why they are making such a big thing around it during the Olympics...has nothing to do with Olympics.<p>I wonder if Olympics were held in USA this year, would those same magazines put NSA logos and colors all over their screen just to show that spying on own citizens is bad? Or would google put DO NOT TRACK logo on their doodle? I doubt...
Google has been running a campaign for two years about gay rights and discouraging 'homophobia' (<a href="https://www.google.com/diversity/legalise-love.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/diversity/legalise-love.html</a>). Also, three main sponsors of Olympics including AT&T have also spoken out against Russian laws.
In India, the Supreme Court recently quashed an appeal and made homosexuality an illegal act under Section 377. Its reasoning was that it is the law that must be changed and therefore it was a legislative act that was required to quash what is an obviously discriminatory law.
I applaud Google for their stand on Russia, but I question why they didn't do the same thing in India. Conspiracy theorists would say because Russia is a strategic foe of the USA and India is not. I am not in that camp, but I do find the question interesting.
The anti-gay laws are there not because the Russian government is homophobic. These laws were created to provoke reactions like this or <a href="http://youtu.be/0KWhaqr1v8s" rel="nofollow">http://youtu.be/0KWhaqr1v8s</a> which will help to turn some strata of the Russian population firmly against the West and prepare ground for the new Iron Curtain. Thank you Google for helping Putin!
Tangentially related, but this is one of the most eloquent, simply stated views on the issue I've seen: <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/watch-an-irish-drag-queens-powerful-speech-about-homophobia" rel="nofollow">http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/watch-an-irish-drag-quee...</a>
That's an interesting grammatical choice of the word "upholds" in the title, OP. When I read "gay rights" and "upholds" together, I start thinking about the law. My first thought when opening this thread was trying to understand what role Google had in upholding the laws related to gay rights (I was clearly wrong haha). But then I thought about it - maybe you meant "supports" but English isn't your first language? They are technically synonyms - support and uphold - but, in common usage when discussing things like this, I think most English-as-first-language speakers would have used the word "supports" to avoid confusion with legal bodies.<p>Google Doodle Supports Gay Rights Ahead of Sochi Olympics
I get deeply uncomfortable when Google does something like this. In general I think it is easy to judge someone half a world away and it is very hard to get things right when looking across cultural barriers. I am going to give my perspective here as an American living in Indonesia and married to a Chinese-Indonesian.<p>One of the key issues that nobody looks at when they talk about this is very distinctly a collective lifestyle choice: retirement living and who retirees live with. This is undoubtedly a collective lifestyle choice, and societies tend to fall in one of two groups: retire with the kids (the international norm) or retire with the spouse.<p>This has tremendous implications for views on reproduction and hence sexuality. Not only is childlessness not a viable personal choice in retire-with-the-children cultures but same-sex couples <i>can never have equality</i> in such cultures. Even if you revert the controversial laws in Russia, they would be replaced with very binding social pressures that are not easily resisted.<p>Part of the reason is that as soon as the norm is that people retire with the kids, and as soon as this expectation is set, then parents get (and find ways to make actionable) a legitimate interest in who their children marry. This means that parents effectively have something nearly like a veto power over childrens' spousal choices but that veto can be overridden by "accidental" pregnancy. This fact effectively dooms the notion of equal rights for same-sex couples in such cultures, and in the end one is, I think, forced either to recognize an equivalent to social security payments as a human right or concede that actual access to same-sex marriage is not one.<p>Russia is in the retire-with-the-kids category, and as a result they have a strong interest in maintaining a sort of traditional family structure that has all but disappeared in Western Europe, the United States, Canada, etc, namely the multi-generation household. On the other hand, for cultures where the primary human contact in retirement is the spouse, then it is deeply unfair to deny people the choice of that relationship for whatever reason they want to spend that time with someone of the same sex (and the reason really is unimportant at that point).<p>As an American living in another retire-with-the-kids culture, I will say that such systems work and work out well for everyone, but that isn't a reason to perpetuate gross unfairness in the US.<p>So I stand in the awkward place of saying that most Western countries probably should look at legalizing same-sex marriage, but that a gay rights movement really would be deeply socially disruptive in a really bad way in much of the world (including Russia).<p>Like it or not, if we ever succeeded in remaking the world in the American image, we'd destroy the planet. If you don't believe me, look at per capita greenhouse gas emissions.
I bet they wont to the same with the World Cup and the United Arab Emirates ,too much oil there, hypocrites. And what about India? and all the other countries where homosexuality is a crime ?
the background image for Google Now on my phone is also rainbow themed<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/sgfXgvs.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/sgfXgvs.png</a>
If Google does something it isn't automatically on topic of 'hacker news'..<p>From HN guidelines:<p>>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.<p>...<p>>If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link.
Channel 4 in the UK also has added the rainbow to its logo for the week, but Google didnt go as far, C4 have a "Gay Mountain" video too <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6RID82Ru-k" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6RID82Ru-k</a>
I can't help but feel that Russia making homosexuality illegal is a simple troll-move. Have the world go ballistic, so noone will look at the things that are truly important (not saying gay rights aren't important, but in Russia it's less than a drop in the ocean).<p>I think we're all feeding the troll.