Photo: Frame from the video “So beautiful”
The Vyborg District Court of St. Petersburg fined music television channel AIVA 500,000 rubles for showing Sergei Lazarev’s “So Beautiful” video, which the judge said promoted same-sex relationships.
In the video, published in 2017 and published on all available online platforms, the men’s hairy hands are seen, against which Lazarev sings. Thus, these hands, as the court established, can belong to people of the same sex. Which, in turn, smacks of propaganda for LGBT* values.
— A corresponding message is created for the audience that people who engage in non-traditional sexual relationships are not only no different from representatives of heterosexual relationships, but that their preferences, if not socially approved, are at least acceptable in society and they are equivalent to the union of a man and a woman,” stated in the court file.
— Deserving special attention is the fragment represented by a sequential change of frames showing hands interacting (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 and sensual interaction of people transmitting their homosexual preferences,” the verdict explains. — A corresponding message is created for the audience that people who engage in non-traditional sexual relationships are not only no different from representatives of heterosexual relationships, but that their preferences, if not socially approved, are at least acceptable in society and they are equivalent to the union of a man and a woman.
The artist’s management and Sergei himself do not comment on the court decision. However, the clip was removed from the singer’s website and his YouTube channel.
Recall that on November 30, the Supreme Court examined the administrative claim of the Ministry of Justice and recognized the “international public movement of LGBT people” as an extremist organization and banned its activities in Russia. The decision has already come into force and is not subject to appeal, since the movement does not have legal personality.
*Recognized as an extremist organization, prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation.
