Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan
has lauded Russian President Vladimir Putin for defending “moral
clarity” in his crackdown against the LGBT community.
“While privacy and freedom of
thought, religion and speech are cherished rights, to equate
traditional marriage and same-sex marriage is to equate good with
evil,” Buchanan wrote in a
WND op-ed tiled Is Putin One of Us? “No moral confusion
here, this is moral clarity, agree or disagree.”
“While much of American and Western
media dismiss [Putin] as an authoritarian and reactionary, a
throwback, Putin may be seeing the future with more clarity than
Americans still caught up in a Cold War paradigm.”
In June, Putin signed a law which
prohibits the promotion of “gay propaganda” to minors, provoking
a loud outcry from the West and calls for a boycott of the Winter
Olympics to be held in Sochi next year. Last week, Putin defended
the law, calling
it the will of the people, a move Buchanan praised.
“Putin asserts, the new immorality
has been imposed undemocratically,” Buchanan wrote. “Does he not
have a point? … Putin is not wrong in saying that he can speak for
much of mankind.”
Three world leaders, including
President Barack Obama, have announced that they will not attend
the Sochi Games. While none specifically cited the law in announcing
their decisions, all three have previously criticized it.
Buchanan
has previously defended the law, likening so-called gay
propaganda to racist and anti-Semitic propaganda.