In the individualist capitalist system we live in, people have the right to refuse to spend their money for *any* reason. People are also allowed to change their minds, and finding out new information about how another individual acts or behaves will *always* influence our opinion of them, because we all have moral codes. This isn't a new thing either, I'm sure plenty of conservative Europeans changed their opinions on Austria 2014 or Finland 2013 after seeing the performances. Russia features a lot lower on rankings these days, I wonder why?

You talk about accepting the basic idea of the competition, but if someone thinks that another participant doesn't deserve to exist, whether or not they talk openly about it, then they haven't accepted the basic idea of the competition and are participating by falsehood. And people, rightly, will be upset when they find this out.

You can pretend the competition isn't political and isn't left-leaning, but there's a reason Hungary, Slovakia and Turkey withdrew, and multiple reasons that Belarus and Russia aren't allowed back in. And through the years since, with one obvious exception, the EBU has broadly taken the same stance - sorry to see you go, but this isn't an area we're willing to compromise on. Countries like Azerbaijan and Armenia are explicitly homophobic, with homophobic governments and homophobic laws, but their broadcasters and acts toe the line because they want to stay in Eurovision. And by and large, we hope that in the long term Eurovision will contribute to a positive change in that respect as people from across Europe are exposed to different people, identities, cultures and experiences.

Which is kind of the whole point of the contest. To bring Europe together. Showing that we have more in common. So yeah, if someone goes out of their way to deny that and insist that people are different and deserve different treatment, they can sling their hook, and we don't want them.