Russia Promptly Destroys Steve Jobs Memorial After Tim Cook Comes Out

A St. Petersburg memorial built to honor Apple founder Steve Jobs has been taken down because his successor, Tim Cook, came out as gay publicly last week, according NBC News.

Erected by a Russian group of companies called ZEFS, the more than 6-foot-tall iPhone-shaped monument was built outside a St. Petersburg technical college in January 2013. It was dismantled on Friday by the very group that had it put up in the first place.

ZEFS released a statement Monday claiming that it needed to abide by Russia's much-reviled nationwide ban on so-called gay propaganda.

"In Russia, gay propaganda and other sexual perversions among minors are prohibited by law," said ZEFS. The group noted that the memorial had been erected "in an area of direct access for young students and scholars." ZEFS had the memorial, which featured a touch screen that displayed information about Jobs and Apple, dismantled only a day after Cook came out.

"After Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly called for sodomy, the monument was taken down to abide to the Russian federal law protecting children from information promoting denial of traditional family values," reads the statement from ZEFS.

The very day that Cook came out, St. Petersburg legislator and key author of Russia's ban on "nontraditional sexual relations" called for Cook to be banned for life from Russian soil.

Fortune reports another more dubious reason ostensibly given for the memorial's dismantling, according to Edward Snowden: "Apple products transmits [sic] data about its users to the American secret services."

Apple has denied that there is way for the government to access your information without a court order from their products. "There is no back door," Cook told ABC News anchor David Muir in January. "The government doesn't have access to our servers. They would have to cart us out in a box for that."