Russian Man With 'Steady Boyfriend' Sues Apple for 'Turning Him Gay'

A Russian man is claiming his iPhone turned him gay -- and he's filed a lawsuit against Apple as a result.

The plaintiff, named D. Razumilov, is seeking 1 million rubles (about $15,000) in damages from the tech giant for "manipulatively pushing me toward homosexuality," reports TheMoscow Times. He filed a lawsuit in Moscow's Presnensky District Court last Wednesday.

The alleged manipulation occurred when Razumilov downloaded a cryptocurrency app in 2017. The app, which Apple has no stake in, offered Razumilov 69 "GayCoins" along with a message in English that he read as "don't judge without trying."

"I thought, indeed, how can I judge something without trying it? And decided to try same-sex relationships," he wrote in the complaint posted online Wednesday by the Russian news source Govorit Moskva and translated by The Moscow Times.

"I can say after the passage of two months that I'm mired in intimacy with a member of my own sex and can't get out," he continued. "I have a steady boyfriend and I don't know how to explain it to my parents. After receiving the aforementioned message, my life has changed for the worse and will never be normal again."

Razumilov claims he is now experiencing "moral suffering and harm to mental health" as a result of the app's influence. He is due to argue his case in court on October 17.

Russia is no leader in LGBTQ equality or acceptance. The Eastern-European country passed its notorious 2013 "gay propaganda" law, which prohibits any positive mention of LGBTQ identity in a venue accessible to minors. It has also allowed credible reports of the persecution and killing of queer people in Chechnya, a republic the country oversees, to go uninvestigated.

While Apple is an LGBTQ-friendly company -- and is helmed by gay CEO Tim Cook -- it has also been cautious about broadcasting Pride through its technology in nations with antigay laws. Notably, the rainbow display of the Apple Watch was "hardcoded" in 2018 to vanish in Russia, where it might have violated the so-called gay propaganda law.