Cher says she has been asked to perform at the opening of the upcoming Winter Olympics, in Sochi, Russia:  And she’s refusing to do it in solidarity with Russia’s embattled LGBT community.

Cher told the Canadian magazine MacLean’s that she was broached by her friend, “who is a big [Russian oligarch].  [He] asked me if I'd like to be an ambassador for the Olympics and open the show,” she said.

“I immediately said no.  I want to know why all of this gay hate just exploded over there.  He said the Russian people don't feel the way the government does.”

She’s referring to a slew of radical new anti-Gay laws signed by President Vladimir Putin that are aimed at limiting the rights of the country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people under the completely ludicrous pretense of preventing the spread of “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors.” 

Cher, of course, is the mother of a transgender adult child, Chaz Bono who was introduced on the “Sonny and Cher” TV variety show in the 1970s as baby “Chastity Bono”.  But her solidarity with the LGBT community came even earlier than that, linked to the long hair and outlandish costumes the formerly married performers donned in the 1960s.

“People hated Sonny and I, because we looked and acted so different,” she told Maclean's.

“Sonny was always getting into fights – people would called him ‘fag’ and he'd get his nose broken – only because we were dressing different.  You can't forget that.”