The Vyborg District Court of St. Petersburg fined the AIVA TV channel (AYVA LLC) 500 thousand rubles because of the video “So Beautiful” by Sergei Lazarev. This was reported by the joint press service of the city courts.
The television channel was found guilty of promoting “non-traditional sexual relationships and (or) preferences, gender reassignment” on the Internet (Part 3 of Article 6.21 of the Administrative Code). According to the information in the case file, the representative of AYVA LLC in court was Vitaly Yakos.
Lazarev’s video, published with the 18+ mark in 2017, shows pairs of lovers — including same-sex couples, as well as people connected by family ties (for example, mother and child). In some frames, people kiss and hug, caress each other's hands. As the press service of the St. Petersburg courts notes, scenes with hands were separately discussed in the case materials.
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“Separately, it is worth paying attention to the fragment presented by a sequential change of frames demonstrating interacting hands (caressing each other), whose relative position in space, their individual characteristics (hair, shape of the nail plate, manicure, jewelry) allow them to be perceived as belonging to two different people of the same sex, that is, potentially perceived as a tactile, sensual interaction of people broadcasting their homosexual preferences,” the press service quotes a fragment from the materials.
Such scenes, according to the security forces who compiled the protocol, create an attitude that “people in non-traditional sexual relationships not only do not differ from representatives of heterosexual relationships, but their preferences, if not socially approved, are at least acceptable in society and are equivalent to the union of a man and a woman.”
Still from the video “So beautiful” by Sergei Lazarev on YouTube