Russia Takes Down Steve Jobs Memorial After Apple's Tim Cook Comes Out

An anonymous reader writes Citing the need to abide by a law combating "gay propaganda," a memorial dedicated to the late Apple founder Steve Jobs has been torn down. This comes on the heels of new CEO Tim Cook coming out as gay. "In Russia, gay propaganda and other sexual perversions among minors are prohibited by law," ZEFS (a Russian group of companies that originally erected the statue) said, noting that the memorial had been "in an area of direct access for young students and scholars". "After Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly called for sodomy, the monument was taken down to abide to the Russian federal law protecting children from information promoting denial of traditional family values."

Comments

Terrible

[Anonymous Coward]

After Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly called for sodomy

I know this is terrible and all, but as someone completely unaffected by this (not an apple fanboy, russian or gay) I find some kind of weird surreal humour in the whole thing.

Mr Putin says there is no discrimination against gay people in Russia and the law was needed only to protect young people

Like, how do you even reach this point of reasoning.

Re:Terrible

[MozeeToby]

I know I turned gay when I heard Tim Cook came out! Wait... that's not how human sexuality works.

Re:Terrible

[Payden K. Pringle]

Then how does it work? Please cite sources.

Re:Terrible

[MightyMartian]

Because you're the autocratic ruler of a backward nation where a healthy percentage of the population still believes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a historical document.

Since the time of Peter the Great, Russia has been an odd mix of backwards regressive state with a shiny veneer of modern technocratic government.

Re:Terrible

[operagost]

If the guy decides to show me his Little Caesar, he's getting no tip.

Re:Terrible

[Gliscameria]

I for one do do whatever statues tell me to do.

Re:Terrible

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU will get the tip. ;)

Re:Terrible

[Crashmarik]

I for one do do whatever statues tell me to do.

Just don't blink when talking to them.

Re:Terrible

[Delarth799]

You are first attacked by a flock of gays and if one of them bites you there is a 45% chance of being infected. With no known antidote upwards of 90% of all those infected turn into The Gay and attempt to turn others.

Re:Terrible

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Sodomy itself is not prohibited, but it is illegal to advocate it.

I experience huge cognitive dissonance when Putin tells me that the law in question was only designed "to protect children from gay propaganda" when in reality, a statue of Jobs, who is a completely different person from Cook, gets torn down because Cook admitted that he's attracted to men. Not only does it mean that merely saying "I'm gay" could get you prosecuted because that alone is "gay propaganda", even if you said no more than that, but just like in the ole' good Soviet times, your family and associates would apparently be punished as well. Take that, all you idiotic Russophiles out there!

Re:Terrible

[AthanasiusKircher]

Sodomy does not mean anal sex. Sodomy refers what went down in Sodom.

...only to 2000 year old myth writers. Sodomy, defined both in common usage and legal usage means exactly that.

Umm, no. In modern sodomy statutes, it is typical to define any sex acts involving anal or ORAL sex as "sodomy," sometimes restricting it only to homosexual anal or oral sex. (But many states had laws on the books also including heterosexual "deviant sex," which could under certain interpretations include anything other than "missionary position" heterosexual sex of married couples.) Old laws also sometimes tended to include bestiality in the definition. We tend to forget the whole oral sex = sodomy in statutes ever since it became an acceptable part of public discourse back in the Clinton era, but that's the way many statutes are written and that's what the word clearly meant at least until 20 years ago or so.

Then again, if you actually read the story in the old testament, the angels get pissed when he offers up his virgin daughters to the crowd (female virginity being a HUGE thing back then) so they won't take the angels.

Umm, not really right here either. If you actually read the story, the "sodomy" as a term comes out of what the mob wants to do to the angels (who apparently appeared MALE), and then after Lot offers his daughters, the mob gets even more incensed and threatens to "do worse" to Lot (i.e., go beyond what he offered for them to do to his daughters, but in a [homosexual] way to Lot).

Re:Terrible

[antifoidulus]

You are looking at this through your own cultural lens. Take a step back and look at in the context of the broader culture and conditions in which these men live. Polygamy and much shorter lifespans for women has created a shortage of marriageable women in Afghanistan. This coupled with severe cultural taboos on pre-marital sex(in the case of Afghanistan, it's not just a taboo, it's illegal) means that for many men, especially those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, other men are essentially the only way they can have sex.

This is not much different from any other situation where women are rare to non-existant(prison, the front lines of a war etc). In these situations men often engage in what is referred to as "trade", but of course none of them wants to label themselves homosexual because:
a) homosexuality is taboo and/or illegal where they come from and/or
b) they aren't actually gay, they are only engaging in homosexual behavior because that's all they have available to them.

It doesn't surprise me at all that men in Afghanistan are having sex with each other but not declaring themselves to be gay.....

Re:Terrible

[Stephan Schulz]

Saying that's not how it works implies you know how it works.

Not true. There are many things of which I know how they don't work without knowing how they work. Before the detection of nuclear fusion, we didn't know how the sun was heated. But we did know that it was not a chemical reaction (not enough fuel for the time it had been burning). I don't know how Google indexes keywords. But I do know they are not looking them up via sequential search (too fast for that). I don't know what the annoying traffic light on my way to work is triggered by, but I know its not telepathy - or I wouldn't be standing there forever each day. And so on. Indeed, that's how science works - you formulate hypotheses and then refute them one-by-one. If you can't refute a reasonable one, that's your tentative model of reality.

Because

[MouseR]

Putin on a horse half naked is not gay.

PR hoax

[Anonymous Coward]

Removal of Steve Jobs memorial due to 'gay propaganda' law turns out to be PR hoax
http://rt.com/news/201855-steve-jobs-memorial-gay/

ah, I understand

[rubycodez]

I didn't know a person could become gay-tainted after they die if their successor is gay. Hope the next person to have my job after I die isn't gay, otherwise my tombstone might set off someone's gaydar. that would be embarrassing.

Re:ah, I understand

[wisnoskij]

I didn't know a person could become gay-tainted after they die if their successor is gay. Hope the next person to have my job after I die isn't gay, otherwise my tombstone might set off someone's gaydar. that would be embarrassing.

Particularly if they were also a necrophiliac.

Re:Never mind that Steve Jobs was not gay

[hey!]

Evidently gay is highly contagious. Scientists say it's not airborne, but some of them have got it, so there's obviously a lot they don't know about how gay is spread. It stands to reason we should do everything we an think of to reduce the public exposure to gay.

Re:Never mind that Steve Jobs was not gay

[SuricouRaven]

If you're accusing a country of holding anti-gay views to the point of retroactively removing people from historical displays because they associated with a homosexual, then this might be one of the few situations where you're actually allowed to make a Nazi comparison.