Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan has likened so-called gay
propaganda to racist and anti-Semitic propaganda in defending
President Vladimir Putin for signing Russia's anti-gay law.
The law, which prohibits the positive portrayal of gay men and
lesbians in a venue where minors might be present, has created an
international uproar, sparked boycotts of Russian exports, in
particular vodka, and calls for a boycott of next year's Winter
Olympics in Sochi.
President
Barack Obama on Friday criticized the law but said that he does
not support a boycott of the Olympics.
In
a column published Tuesday, Buchanan backed Putin, saying that he
was just “trying to re-establish the Orthodox Church as the moral
compass of the nation it had been for 1,000 years before Russia fell
captive to the atheistic and pagan ideology of Marxism.”
“As Father Regis Scanlon writes in Crisis Magazine, in
2005, Pope Benedict XVI reiterated Catholic doctrine that
homosexuality is a 'strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral
evil,' an 'objective disorder.' That homosexual acts are unnatural
and immoral remains Catholic teaching.”
“Thus, if we seek to build a Good Society by traditional
Catholic and Christian standards, why should not homosexual
propaganda be treated the same as racist or anti-Semitic propaganda?”
he wrote.
“We can no longer even agree on what is good and evil,”
Buchanan added.