Kuban woman fined for LGBT* propaganda

A court in the town of Slavyansk-on-Kuban (Krasnodar Territory) has obliged Darya Rashevskaya, a local resident to pay a fine of 900,000 roubles under an administrative article on LGBT* propaganda. The court has treated the film screenshots and clips posted in Darya's social network page as such propaganda.

In Rashevskaya's page in the "saved photos" section, a policeman found photos with "persons of the same gender" posted in 2012, 2019 and 2020, which create "a distorted idea of social equivalence of traditional and non-traditional sexual relationships." The advocate has explained that these are screenshots of kissing scenes from films and music videos. Darya has pleaded guilty and repented.

She has explained that some of the images that have led to the imposed fine were memes and nude photos from popular art communities. "There was a still from the Take me to church video ... there were funny captions, but [the police] wouldn't take that into account," Darya Rashevskaya has explained.

According to her story, she has filed appeal complaints and closed her page in the "VKontakte" social network.

The "Caucasian Knot" has also reported that a video of a schoolboy from the village of Dinskaya dancing in a Snow Maiden costume had aroused discontent among local residents, who complained to authorities about LGBT* propaganda.

*On November 30, 2023, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation declared the movement an "extremist organization" and banned the "international public movement of LGBT people". With this decision, the court satisfied the claim of the Russian Ministry of Justice, sent to the court on November 17, 2023.