Now, Russia. Russia *was* all of these things. Russia is a lot more homogenous than America, Canada, UK, etc but racism isn't that huge. People of different races are seen as a curiosity, but not despised, at least not in my experience. Women have equal rights as men, and hold positions of power. There are still issues for feminists to work on in Russia, but the expectation is that the country has reached the stage where they can finally embrace that final 10%. And what do they do? They take a huge step backwards. They *codify* discrimination instead of outlawing it. The lawmakers themselves say, "You'll be OK if you keep a low profile!"
I am intimately familiar with Russian culture. Outside of Moscow and Peter it is very homophobic, and certainly there is no shortage of it in the cities. But internationally we *expected* Russia to move forward, but they moved quickly backward, and now they have the world stage.
So this is why we don't care as much about human rights in Saudi right now as in Russia. We expected more. At least in Saudi women can vote and run for office now, so they are taking steps forward. It's the step back that hurts, and of course it hurts those affected more.
I guess the US State Department puts this on their travel advisory for Russia for the hell of it then?
