Editor's Note: A factual inaccuracy has been changed.

In 1931, Germany won the bid to host the 1936 Summer Olympics. The games would be Hitler’s opportunity to show the world the dominance of a perfect, unified, racially pure state.

But American track star Jesse Owens didn’t care much for Hitler’s passionate and zealous boasting. Owens would go on to win four gold medals in track and field events and tarnish Hitler’s dream of a literal German whitewash of the games.

Seventy-seven years later, Russian President Vladimir Putin is picking up Hitler’s mantle, once again declaring his citizens are cleaner than others.

Last month, Putin implemented a law backed by the Russian Parliament banning “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations around minors.” Basically, it bans any form of media coverage or public discussion about gay rights and relationships anywhere children could hear it. This comes into effect while images of Putin riding a horse shirtless through the wilderness are not only accessible, but strangely omnipresent. That, if anything, can be labeled as “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations around minors.”

While it is severely unfortunate that the Russian government seems to be reverting to Cold War hostility, it isn’t anything surprising. Within just the last year, violence has run rampant at pride parades in Moscow and St. Petersburg. And in October of 2012, two of the five members of Pussy Riot, a feminist punk rock protest group, were imprisoned after their performance in a Moscow cathedral.

[quote]Surely it would just be safer to have our athletes stay home, but Jesse Owens didn’t stay home in 1936, and our athletes certainly aren’t going to in 2014.[/quote]

In February, a small Russian city called Sochi will be hosting the 2014 Olympic Games. Unsurprisingly, demands that the International Olympic Committee cancel the games came shortly after the propaganda laws were enacted. This was an impossible request, so instead attention turned to how the United States would handle Russia’s barbarian approach to human rights.

We have a president who supports gay marriage, and we’ve boycotted the Olympics in Russia before, in 1980. Surely it would just be safer to have our athletes stay home, but Jesse Owens didn’t stay home in 1936, and our athletes certainly aren’t going to in 2014.

They’ve trained their whole lives to compete against opponents from around the world, and by announcing its backwards stance on acceptance, Russia’s government has simply made itself another opponent to overcome. And they’ll be ready.

Already, many competitors in the World Track and Field Championships — held this month in Moscow — have displayed their protests against the Russian government. An American runner dedicated his silver medal to all of his gay friends, a German pole vaulter painted her nails after the rainbow flag and, best of all, two Russian women kissed on the podium after winning gold in the 4x400.

There may not be one single trailblazer in Sochi that stands out like Jesse Owens did in 1936 Berlin. But it will only be because gay and straight athletes alike are making their stand against the Russian government.

So Putin, I’ll make a deal with you. Prove to me that a gay athlete standing at a podium with a medal around his or her neck is harmful to children, and in return, I’ll show you how to put on a shirt.