Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
A court in the southwestern city of Samara has fined local news site 63.ru one million rubles, roughly $13,300, or about six hours of sanctions-evasion revenue, for publishing a February article about swinger parties. The piece, headlined “There’s no turning back from debauchery: how swinger parties in Russia work — we learned everything, even the prices,” was flagged by media regulator Roskomnadzor as promoting “non-traditional sexual relations.” The relations in question involve heterosexual married couples having heterosexual sex with other heterosexual married couples. Somehow, the court determined this was gay. It is unclear whether Roskomnadzor also reviewed the prices or whether the prices were reasonable.
A giant muscle man statue in Samara that probably isn't gay. But also probably is. (Michael live/wikipedia)
Prosecutors argued that partner-swapping runs counter to “marital fidelity” and the “stability and exclusivity” of the family unit, values the Russian state has promoted by invading its neighbor, drafting its husbands and sons, and losing over one million of them to the meat grinder.
In November 2022, Russia expanded its “LGBT propaganda” law, broadening a statute that had previously only restricted such material around minors into a general-purpose instrument for generating government income via fines. Since then, the law has been applied to people who displayed rainbow flags on social media, a woman who wore rainbow-colored frog earrings, a bookstore that stocked Susan Sontag novels, and a streaming platform that aired a Spanish family drama depicting a wedding between two women. Now the law has been applied to six pages of reporting about husbands and wives taking turns banging each other.
Roskomnadzor, which has spent the past decade refining the definition of “non-traditional,” did not explain which specific traditions the swingers had departed from. Russian tradition on this matter is extensive. Catherine the Great is reported to have maintained a productive social calendar. Rasputin is said to have been “broadly popular”. The current head of state has been photographed riding a horse without a shirt on, which in other jurisdictions might constitute extra-sexy propaganda.
Legal analysts note that the original “propaganda” law was written to protect children from learning that gay people exist, but it has since expanded to cover adults learning that other heterosexual adults exist and they’re having much better parties. Under the current interpretation, a married heterosexual couple reading a newspaper article about other married heterosexual couples is now a LGBT-adjacent act, provided the reading is done with sufficient interest, or something. Really, none of this makes sense.
The fine will stand unless appealed, which it will not be, because the lawyer who would file the appeal was fined last week for following a hairdresser on Instagram.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
