Writer and director Oliver Stone has always been a fan of rewriting history. He’s at it again, this time concerning Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Stone has responded to criticisms stemming from his interviews with Putin for his 2017 series The Putin Interviews for Showtime, which have just been made available on DVD this month. In addition to taking heat for asking Putin to be his daughter’s godfather, Stone has been called out for siding with him over Russia’s so-called anti-gay “propaganda law.”

Alexei Druzhinin\TASS via Getty Images

It was signed into law by Putin in 2013 and has been used to prevent LGBTQ rights demonstrations and Pride events, as well as the blocking of websites, censoring of movies, and even an investigation into a children’s art show. Last year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled it was a violation of free assembly rights.

“As you know, I’ve been very rebel all my life. Still am,” Stone told Putin, according to the transcript of their conversation.

“And I have to tell you, I’m shocked by some of the behaviors and the thinking of the new generation. It takes so much for granted. And so much of the argument, so much of the thinking, so much of the newspaper, television commentaries about gender, people identify themselves, and social media, this and that, I’m male, I’m female, I’m transgender, I’m cisgender. It goes on forever, and there is a big fight about who is who. It seems like we miss the bigger point,” the filmmaker added.

Stone then asked about the propaganda law, which Putin tried to pass off as nothing more than “allowing people to reach maturity and then decide who they are and how they want to live.”

“There are no restrictions at all after this,” he continued, despite the fact that it is still illegal to marry or adopt as a same-sex couple, and there are little or no protections against discrimination for sexual orientation and gender identity in the country.

Stone called the anti-LGBTQ propaganda law possibly “sensible.”

He has since attempted to clarify himself with a Facebook post, in which he claims he knows Putin isn’t anti-LGBTQ because he said he wasn’t. Apparently we are to take the word of dictators now.

“As to gay/LGBTQ beliefs in Russia, again much misunderstood. Mr. Putin made himself clear in The Putin Interviews—he’s not anti-gay/LGBTQ. Nor am I,” Stone wrote.

Alexei Druzhinin\TASS via Getty Images

“Have another look at Alexander, for which we took a beating in 2004. Beyond the Hephaestion story in the sexuality department, I prominently featured Alexander’s love for the Persian eunuch Bagoas, certainly an example of a third sex and emblematic of Alexander’s world vision, which I much admired. Do not bring American expectations to Russian life any more than you expect Iran, Korea, Venezuela, or China to follow our political or social demands.”

Stone also said he had only asked Putin to be his child’s godfather as a joke.



In addition to signing an anti-LGBTQ law that allows him to shutdown any demonstration or sign of LGBTQ identities, Putin delayed investigating Chechnya’s reported anti-LGBTQ abuses. Only after the international outrage grew loud enough to be impossible to ignore did he look into the allegations of detentions, beatings, and killings of queer people in the region—a federal subject of Russia—and then declared nothing had occurred despite numerous firsthand accounts.

The abuses are reportedly still taking place, as Russia continues to do nothing to stop them.





