Detroit Red Wings superstar Pavel Datsyuk, who is Russian, defended his church’s views on homosexuality when asked to respond to comments by Russian pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva, a two-time Olympic champion, who fiercely defended Russia’s anti-gay law.
“If we allow to promote and do all this stuff on the street, we are very afraid about our nation because we consider ourselves like normal, standard people,” Isinbayeva said last week. “We just live with boys with woman, woman with boys.”
Isinbayeva continued, “Everything must be fine. It comes from history. We never had any problems, these problems in Russia, and we don’t want to have any in the future.”
An official from Russia’s Orthodox church has said:
“This is a very dangerous apocalyptic symptom, and we must do everything in our powers to ensure that sin is never sanctioned in Russia by state law, because that would mean that the nation has embarked on a path of self-destruction.”
Datsyuk responded by reportedly saying, “I’m an orthodox and that says it all.”
Prominent Russian athletes are being asked their views on homosexuality after Russian President Vladmir Putin signed an anti-gay law that may be broadly interpreted to arrest gays and lesbians. That law has come under the international spotlight because Russia will host the 2014 Winter Olympic games in Sochi and the 2018 World Cup in Moscow.
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