a response to tamar iveri

A Twitter/Facebook storm has erupted over Georgian opera singer Tamar Iveri, currently rehearsing for her season with Opera Australia at the Sydney Opera House.

A lengthy Facebook post dated 18th May 2013, by either Tamar Iveri herself or - as she claims - her husband on her behalf and addressed to "Mr. President" [of Georgia] had referred to LGBT people as "fecal masses" and given voice to the opinion that "often, in certain cases, it is necessary to break the jaws in order to be appreciated as a nation," commenting on violent attacks that had been perpetrated against the participants of a small gay pride parade. 

As this came to light over the last 48 hours or so, calls for Opera Australia to terminate the singer's engagement grew louder. Today, 21st June 2014, Opera Australia issued a brief statement on its own Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/OperaAustralia), referring to an 'apology' by Tamar Iveri which was in turn posted to her Facebook page, also today (https://www.facebook.com/tamariverisoprano).

This is my response to that 'apology':

Tamar Iveri

This is not going to go away as easy as all that. If you are telling the truth - and who am I to say whether you are or not - then you still have a mountain of explaining to do:

1) You blame the hateful, vicious words that appeared on your Facebook page on your husband. Do you not talk to each other? If you are surrounded by gay friends whom you respect and care about, does he not know this? Has he not met them? Does he not realise you’re a public figure? What sane man would post on his famous spouse’s public platform something that was absolutely designed and worded to deeply hurt and insult not only her friends but also many of her colleagues and a significant segment of her audience? Your husband is either extremely stupid, incomprehensibly bigoted or both. This can’t have been news to you: why would you give such a man access to your Facebook page, no matter how much - for whatever reasons - you love him?

2) You say you apologised at the time to the Georgian LGBT community and they accepted your apology. As this post - whoever composed or sanctioned it in your name - is spreading contempt and incitement to violence around the world, that local apology is no longer enough. Your statement above contains no apology to your Australian employers, your international audience, your colleagues or anybody else in the world who either is or is not part of the LGBT community, but who cares for the dignity and rights of all human beings, regardless of gender, religion, race, creed, or sexuality.

3) I am not going to be anywhere near the Sydney Opera House over the coming few months, but I should not be surprised if even a full apology and plausible explanation may not, by this stage, be quite enough for those whom you expect to pay the tickets and the taxes that finance your career: I imagine that to rehabilitate your shattered reputation you will need to make a bold, grand gesture of the kind that leaves no doubt in anybody’s mind - not your husband’s, not your compatriots in Georgia, and certainly not your worldwide audience - that you are sincere and value the support that people from all backgrounds and denominations have been giving you to get where you are (and where, presumably, you’d like to stay) today.

It’s friendly advice, this: I would give you - as I would anyone - the benefit of the doubt. But the doubt, at this stage, is still abysmally deep.

(Incidentally: as far as I can tell, your Facebook post makes no mention at all of any commemoration event for Georgian soldiers that the parade in question may have clashed with. Your post is available in full here: http://identoba.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/letter-of-ms-iveri-to-president-of-georgia_english.pdf )

Sincerely

Sebastian Michael

Added 21st June 2014, 1pm BST:
Letter to Tamar Iveri by Irakli Vacharadze, Georgian LGBT Activist, in response to the same events.

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give putin what he really wants: the gayest games in history

You have to hand it to Pute: an act of courage and insight, delivered in a manoeuvre of such Machiavellian cunning that everybody was bound to view it as the reverse.

He could have had it so easy, by comparison. Granted, there are the allegations of corruption that just won't go away, and persistent warnings about security threats, but what self-respecting national leader with a degree of personal authority and a large state apparatus of highly disciplined personnel couldn't handle that and put a lid on it, if he wanted to.

He could have had it so easy, by comparison.

Sochi 2014 would have been un-noteworthy, other than for its state-of-the-art facilities, a road into the mountains that might as well, for its cost, be paved with caviar, and of course the sporting achievements of its glorious, beautiful athletes.

A shirtless Putin impresses the girls as well as the boys.

But Vlad had other ideas. Being a bit of a Gay Icon himself, he is of course steeped in a deeply conservative culture where large portions of the population hold views on sexuality that in many western democracies would have been considered reactionary sixty years ago, and in which the Orthodox Church wields a considerable amount of power.

The bloodied face of a young man who was beaten up during a Gay Pride parade in St Petersburg in June 2013 has become one of the emblems of Russians' struggle for equality.

What was he to do? It's hard to come out - under such circumstances - in support of minorities and their human rights, without riling the strong men around you, incurring their disapproval and wrath.

So he took a leaf out of another great leader's book: when Margaret Thatcher needed to draw attention to her party's rampant homophobia in the 1980s, she brought in Section 28. It worked a treat: within days the gays of the UK were out on the streets, with lesbians abseiling into the House of Lords and invading TV studios, and people properly appropriating every platform available until the damn thing was effectively buried and the Tories were left to spend a decade or so ridding themselves of the 'Nasty Party' tag so readily acquired.

When Margaret Thatcher needed to draw attention

to her party's rampant homophobia in the 1980s,

she brought in Section 28.

Putin knew what he had to do: so back in June 2013, while everything was going swimmingly, he signed into law a similarly daft piece of legislation that prohibits the promotion of 'non-traditional' relationships to minors. Boom. Everybody talking about it.

Now the world had something to focus on. Imagine what a wasted opportunity these Games would have been, had he not done so? In one fell swoop, people who never took the slightest interest in winter sports, who couldn't tell the difference between a sledge and a skeleton if one or the other hit them at 80 miles an hour, had reason to be genuinely agitated.

Sponsors like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Visa and Proctor & Gamble, who blithely spend billions of consumers' money on associating themselves with an Olympics, suddenly faced valid questions about their ethics, their stance on equality and their support or otherwise of draconian regimes.

"Oops, let's pretend you didn't just type that." A Coca-Cola interactive was configured to accept words like 'straight' and 'homophobic', but not 'gay'. Coke has apologised and set about to fix the "mistake."

And Putin didn't leave it at that. Knowing how critical this time is for him, his country, and his games, his next move was to say: 'gay people are welcome, as long as they leave the kids alone.' Genius. He could have just said: 'gay people are welcome.' Saying 'as long as they leave the kids alone' is completely unnecessary. It's stating the obvious. No sane person would think or do otherwise.

You would never say to your straight friends: 'you may come and visit, but please leave the kids alone.' But in the oppressive world he lives in, he can't just say: 'gay people are welcome,' that might upset some of his pals. Saying, 'you're welcome and (obviously) leave the kids alone' is like saying: 'you're really welcome, we need you here: you can tell how badly we need you, I have to speak in code.'

If there was any doubt about the sincerity and grave urgency of this invitation, his party mate and Mayor of Sochi, Anatoly Pakhomov, went one step further, exclaiming: 'There are no gay people in Sochi! And if there are, I don't bloody know them.'

The world jumped on this as a statement of pitiful ignorance and bigotry, when clearly it was a cry for help: 'There are no gays in Sochi: we need you! This town is drab and empty without you, and the few of you there are are so invisible, I can't bloody well find you to join and hang out with you. So please, come over here, and be as gay as you possibly can!" Is surely what he was trying to say.

In need of gay friends: Anatoly Pakhomov, Mayor of Sochi

Fabulous. The two of them played a blinder: it's a master stroke and I think for the whole world to oblige will only amount to good manners.

'Please come over here and be as gay as you possibly can.'

There are a million ways you can be gay, whether you're gay, straight, bi or anywhere in-between or nowhere at all on that 'scale', and having been so clearly and unequivocally called upon by the Russian and Sochi leadership to be gay, I do hope that athletes, journalists, fans, visitors, commentators, anyone at all really who finds themselves in Sochi for these games, will make the absolutely most of it.

Wear symbols, hold hands, kiss, hug, dance, and celebrate humanity and make this Olympiad a Fest of Love with warmth and gayness in whatever way you can.

It would be so rude not to.

Sochi student Vladislav Slavsky and his boyfriend (who wants to remain anonymous)
overlooking the seaside promenade of their home town.

Getting right in the spirit of things was Channel 4 in the UK with this delightful 'Special Winter Anthem', wishing 'good luck to everyone out in Sochi': Gay Mountain

There are several organisations campaigning for human rights in Russia and for awareness of these issues during the Winter Olympics 2014. Among them:

The Principle 6 Campaign bases itself on the Olympic Charter itself and uses a new, purpose designed logo that quotes the Charter's own statement about discrimination: 

Allout is working globally for equality and the rights of people to live without fear, irrespective of their sexuality or gender identity.  

Athlete Ally works to end homophobia in sport generally.


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