Photo by Lorie Shaull via Wikimedia Commons
Brittney Griner
Brittney Griner
Just days before the unexpected release of gold medal Olympian and WNBA star Brittney Griner, an NPR radio interview focused on her plight as a prisoner in a Russian penal colony. The program’s guest explained the Griner saga as that of an abandoned, disposable Black female and lesbian athlete. There was some truth to that. One could easily imagine a straight white male sport celebrity in a similar plight being celebrated on every sportscast. Perhaps there would even be an “Incarceration Clock” on Times Square ticking away the days, hours, minutes and seconds the poor guy was languishing in a Russian penal colony. Still, what NPR’s guest and the rest of us underestimated was the nature of President Joe Biden’s diplomacy and, especially, his exceptional sensitivity to the cause of LGBTQ rights and equality.
One has to contemplate the prevailing circumstances to understand the art of the negotiations. The United States is leading the effort to support Ukraine’s effort to fend off Russia’s war of aggression, a war that has been marked by Russian war crimes. Then there is the Russian President Vladimir Putin regime’s animus towards its own LGBTQ population. In recent weeks Russia has actually expanded its already draconian anti-LGBTQ laws. President Biden also had to cope with Putin friendly Republicans whose support for Griner’s release was tempered by the inherently racist, misogynistic and homophobic values they share with the Russian dictator.
The great irony here is the critical and unsurprisingly predictable response of the right-wing rabble. Social media was abuzz with armchair foreign policy experts writing their well-considered opinions, answering the question “Why did President Biden trade the arms dealer for Griner rather than the other prisoner, Paul Whelan, the (dishonorably discharged) former Marine accused of espionage?” Many responded, “Because she’s gay” others, “Because she’s Black.” (These voices were, of course silent, when their lord and master, the one term, twice impeached, disgraced former guy was doing nothing for Whelan, and released 5,000 imprisoned Taliban fighters, including notorious leaders, as part of his Afghanistan exit strategy. But, never mind …) Still, for their bigoted lack of originality, there may have been some truth to that. Actually, I hope there was.
Create a Crisis
President Biden certainly would have considered Griner’s sexual orientation, marriage and race among the many other aspects of her arrest and incarceration. Personally, I have no doubt she was set up, denounced by one of her Russian “friends” who may have working officially or unofficially with authorities. The arrest of a high-profile American was likely planned in advance to create a diplomatic crisis and lever the prisoner exchange. Griner provided the perfect foil. Perhaps Whelan would have as well but somehow his case seems somewhat murkier in its details than the Griner’s. In fact, Whelan was arrested in Russia in December 2018 shortly after Russian spy Maria Butina was sentenced to prison by a U.S. court for acting as an unregistered foreign agent a few months earlier. (Butina, as one might recall, attended Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s presidential campaign launch event and had a close working relationship with Milwaukee County’s ex-Sheriff David Clarke among other leading Republicans.)
Then there is the issue of the prisoner swap itself. Griner’s release was in exchange for Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer. Nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” Bout had already served 11 years of a 25-year sentence. Republicans on Capitol Hill joined the indignant chorus on social media criticizing fairness of the trade and again conveniently forgetting those 5,000 released Taliban. Ironically enough, while they rabidly frothed over Bout’s crime of selling weapons that endangered American lives, they apparently have little concern that their own gun-fetishizing 2nd Amendment fixation and determination to expand gun accessibility directly or indirectly caused 45,000 deaths in 2020 alone.
To put that number in perspective, in America’s recent wars, 58, 209 died in the eight-year long Vietnam War, and the fatalities over the 20 years since 2001 in the so-called War on Terror (that includes the Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars) total 7,025. In other words, one is far safer from domestic gun violence in a war abroad than in the United States. So, it would seem the GOP is the true merchant of death to be condemned here.
Be that as it may, once again, Griner’s treatment points to the depths of Republican hypocrisy. It also underscores the cultivated prism of otherness, hate and fear with which the right views anyone who does not conform to their definition of American (read straight, white and Christian). So, yes, it’s just another head-shaking example of Republican LGBTQ animus, misogyny and racism. The NPR guest was right after all.
Meanwhile, we should all be grateful for President Biden.
