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A Moscow court took Anton Yevdokimov seriously — or at least thought his joke amounted to pro-LGBTQ+ "propaganda" — and fined him 100,000 rubles, equivalent to about $950.
A Russian man has been fined 100,000 rubles — equal to about $950 — for jokingly claiming he had started the international LGBTQ+ rights movement.
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A Moscow court found Anton Yevdokimov, 36, guilty of spreading “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations.” The verdict came down in November, but it is just now being reported.
Yevdokimov disseminated the so-called propaganda, the court ruled, through two posts on VK, a Russian social media platform, in December 2023, Novaya Gazeta reports. In one post, with a picture of a Pride flag, he wrote, “Now that they’ve banned LGBT, it’s time to confess: I am the founder and main organiser of the LGBTQ+ extremist organisation!”
“I went to Rainbow High School, was recruited there, and now irradiate all homophobes with rainbows!” he added. Every time a homophobe looks at a rainbow, they get a tingle in their ass and want to suck dicks.” He warned “KGB cocksuckers” that they should “be afraid.”
The court apparently took Yevdokimov seriously or at least wanted to make it clear that even joking about an LGBTQ+ movement was not allowed.
In November 2023, the Russian Supreme Court labeled the “international LGBT public movement” as extremist and banned it from the nation, granting a request from Russia’s Ministry of Justice. There is really no such movement, just individual LGBTQ+ rights groups in many countries.
Russia also passed a law banning LGBTQ+ “propaganda” — basically, any positive mention of LGBTQ+ identity or rights — in venues accessible to minors in 2013, and in 2022 it extended the law to cover adults.
When he received the fine, Yevdokimov was already in police custody and awaiting trial because of another social media post he wrote that authorities claimed justified terrorism, according to Novaya Gazeta. He has often protested against Russia’s authoritarian government, and he was arrested in January 2021 when attending a rally supporting Alexei Navalny, a leading opposition voice. Navalny died last year in a Russian penal colony.
