Russian police have been enforcing the country's controversial anti-LGBT legislation by arresting people for dressing in ways that made them “look too gay”.

“Trying to arouse interest in non-traditional sexual relations” has been considered a crime in Russia for over a decade, but the law was usually enforced against individuals and organizations that published and promoted LGBT “propaganda”. However, a recent analysis of court documentation by an independent news outlet revealed that the Kremlin's strategy to promote ‘traditional values' now includes detaining and fining people for “looking too gay”. The Russian news website Verstka revealed an incident that occurred back in February of last year but was never covered by the media in which eight individuals were detained by police for wearing clothing that promoted “non-traditional sexual relations”.


During a raid in a nightclub in the city of Tula, Russian police detained and later fined a group of men suspected of promoting an LGBT agenda. According to the photos and description discovered in Vertska's recent court document analysis, one of the offenders had “pink socks, an unbuttoned kimono over his shoulders, his hair dyed bright orange, and red tattoos on his face,” while another had “crosses of black tape glued to his nipples” and wore a “women's style corset”.

“Although a man, he was wearing a short top covering his chest, black leather shorts above the knee, on which there were several chain-shaped ornaments and fishnet tights,” police described another suspect.

The Russian Court reportedly agreed that “the appearance of the detainees was inconsistent with the image of a man of traditional sexual orientation,” and fined two of them 50,000 rubles ($467). The bartender of the raided club claimed he was a goth to explain why he had turquoise hair, eyebrow piercings, and a black t-shirt rolled up to his chest.

Back in 2019, we wrote about a Russian iPhone user who sued Apple for allegedly turning him gay.

(https://theonion.com/elon-musk-offers-self-10-billion-federal-buyout/)

WASHINGTON—Saying he was just more deadweight hampering the executive branch's ability to function efficiently, Elon Musk confirmed Monday that he had offered himself $10 billion to resign from his position as head of President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency. “Like many other federal employees, I too have been presented with a buyout option as part of my effort to create a more streamlined and flexible government workforce,” said Musk, adding that he had given himself until Feb. 6 to accept the terms of a “dignified, fair departure” from his government position. “On the one hand, this job has been really, really good to me. On the other, it might make sense to quit now and avoid the risk of being downsized by myself later on.” At press time, Musk had reportedly upped his buyout offer to $20 billion but had yet to convince himself that number was anywhere close to what he could rake in with unprecedented control of the federal bureaucracy.

"You see, one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty."

[...]

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D."

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."

"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in this country, could not have imagined."

[...]

"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many people became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."

I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.