Republican US House Speaker John Boehner’s office hosted a meeting today in the US House of Representatives to learn Russia’s and Uganda’s “best practices” for terrorizing their gay and, more generally, minority populations.

The meeting by the World Congress of Families was originally set to take place in the US Senate, until Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois intervened last night and canceled the Senate-provided meeting space.

Speaker Boehner then, this morning, offered the anti-gay anti-gay groups meeting space in the US House under his auspices, so that Americans can hopefully someday import the Russian and Ugandan way of dealing with, as the group’s spokesman put it, “the policies of decline, death and disease promoted by the Sexual Radicals.”

Speaker Boehner’s Russia best practices

Here are the Russian methods that Speaker Boehner apparently thinks are worthy of possibly importing to America.

Russian anti-gay legislation

In Russia, the preferred method for dealing with the gay problem is a new law that throws you in jail for being openly gay, or saying, doing, or writing anything that is perceived as pro-gay.

For example, it is now illegal in Russia to wear rainbow suspenders, and the Russian government recently launched an investigation as to whether the flag of its Jewish Autonomous Region broke the anti-gay law because the flag contains a rainbow.

Russia also is now threatening to prosecute a newspaper that reported on a gay teacher being fired, and in its reporting quoted the teacher saying “My very existence is effective proof that homosexuality is normal.” That quote is now illegal under Russian law – because the quote is itself pro-gay – even though it simply quotes the victim of discrimination in an unbiased manner.

The Russians are also considering legislation that would forcibly remove children from their gay parents, potentially affecting several million families in Russia. The legislation was recently “temporarily postponed,” prlikelyobably because it was causing the Putin government too much embarrassment in the months leading up to the Olympics. Expect it to come back after the 2014 Sochi Games in February.

Russian government’s tacit approval of neo-Nazi anti-gay violence

The second effective way that the Russians have dealt with their gay problem is by tacitly condoning, and participating in, violence against their gay and trans citizens.

For quite some time now, neo-Nazi have been organizing across Russia to systematically kidnap young gay men and boys and terrorize them through threats of, and actual, violence, including a recent rape with a bottle that was jammed up the rectum of a young gay Russian with a baseball bat. The rape was intended to “cure” the young Russian of gay gay orientation.

The kidnappings also often involve forcing the victim to drink urine, as another “cure” for being gay.

Some of the victims have been as young as 15 years of age:

The Russian government has let the neo-Nazis organize nationwide with no real threat of prosecution. The vigilantes happily include their faces, and images of their easily-recognizable town, in their videos, knowing the government will do nothing. In fact, the man who is putatively organizing the nationwide effort is well-known in and out of Russia.

Racism

The final lesson that has apparently impressed Speaker Boehner enough to host this august meeting is Russia’s systematic and violent abuse of any minority considered “non-white” (which, in Russia, is practically anyone not blonde).

In addition increasing violence against migrant workers, the neo-Nazi groups are now targeting foreign gays based on race, including this young South African who was held hostage, had his head shaved, was forced to run like some stereotype of an African t, then had a watermelon shoved in his face, presumably because he’s black. The attack on him, was videotaped and posted on Russian social media, with the perpetrators faces in clear view, as they always are. Yet again, there is no news of any Russian arrests.

Wiretapping of American human rights advocates

The final admirable lesson that Speaker Boehner apparently wishes Americans to learn from Russia is the secret wiretapping of human rights group, including Americans.

Speaker Boehner’s Uganda best practices

Uganda’s efforts to eradicate gays, which Speaker Boehner apparently so admires, is more direct than the Russian way.

In Uganda, the legislative efforts have focused on putting gays to death – legislation that one of the “leaders” attending the Speaker’s meeting has praised.

Like the Russian anti-gay law, the proposed Ugandan legislation would make it illegal to say anything critical of the measure. But unlike the Russians, who have chosen to use (mostly) third parties to exact violent revenge on its gay minority, the Ugandan legislation includes the death penalty for crimes as simple as renting an apartment to a gay couple that then has sex in the apartment, or the “crime” of a gay person having sex with a person with a disability.

Again, these are the “best practices” that Speaker Boehner felt were so laudatory, and so important to potentially import to America.

Keep all of this in mind the next time anyone tells you that the Republican party has changed, that the Republican party isn’t racist, and that the Republican party isn’t run by a bunch of hateful old men. Because it is.

And while it’s great that Republican Senator Mark Kirk is really the hero of this story, Mark Kirk doesn’t run the Republican party. Hateful, intolerant, bigots like John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and Ted Cruz run the Republican party. And there’s no indication of that changing anytime soon.

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