Could all the 'Russia is gay' jokes at Sochi be doing more harm than good?

"Nobody tell Russia, but look how super gay their Olympics opening ceremony was," reported the Huffington Post. "Sorry Putin, the Sochi opening ceremony was totally gay," wrote the Daily Beast, while New Statesman went for: "At the Sochi winter Olympics, the Russian establishment is trying to out-gay the gays."The problem is that these articles conflate "gay" and "camp". It becomes a paradox of homophobia, albeit a well-intentioned one: in highlighting the ridiculousness of being anti-gay, these pieces fall back on hackneyed stereotypes of gay life. The cover of Get Lucky, a macho tale of "getting some" with a girl who's been out all night partying, is only being labelled gay because it's got a disco riff, and all gay people love disco, right?The same goes for the opening ceremony's much-mocked sparkles, excesses, showy outfits and glitzy melodrama (as if this is somehow different to any other Olympics opening ceremony in recent history). It was camp, but camp is not inherently gay. Nor is a man crying at a film, though a Buzzfeed article titled "The 16 Most Homoerotic Photos of Vladimir Putin", suggests that when Putin does it, it means he definitely likes to have sex with men.I know it's satire and that they mean well. Many of these writers are gay. Pointing out that Russia is full of gayness is in direct opposition to the Sochi mayor's assertion that there are no gay people in his city. It is empowering to challenge the now-official edict that gay people should not be seen or heard, and it is all the more satisfying to do this with wit.So I understand why it's amusing to imply that Putin, who warns gay people to stay away from children because of the widely held belief in Russia that homosexuality is the same as paedophilia, is as gay as the people whose lives he is effectively criminalising. But to do this is to employ cliches and stereotypes broadly asserting that all gay people are the same. They are not, and if this awful Russian legislation teaches us anything, it's that there is real danger in insisting that they are.(theguardian.com)ANN.Az