Google’s “Olympic Charter” Logo Stands Up To Russia’s Anti-Gay Legislation

If you had any doubts over how Google feels about Russia’s legislation against gay “propaganda,” just go the Google home page. The company has started what will be a string of special logos for the Olympics with one that includes a quote stressing that the official Olympic Charter is against discrimination and using the colors of the rainbow gay pride flag.

The logo is shown above, along with a quote from the Olympic Charter, which says:

“The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.” –Olympic Charter

The link at the end of the quote does the same as clicking on the logo, generates a search on Google for “Olympic Charter” rather than leading to the charter itself. But those results make clear the amount of opposition there is out there from athletes and others over the conflict between the Olympic Charter’s anti-discrimination clause and the Russian law, as the 2014 Winter Olympics gets started in Sochi:

The first link does lead to the charter (PDF file) at the International Olympic Committee’s web site.

Google logos don’t always run on all the companies various country-specific web sites. But this one appears to be global, showing up not just on Google.com but also Google Canada, Google UK or Google Saudi Arabia, as shown below:

And yes, it also appears on Google Russia, with the quote written in Russian: