A Moscow court on Thursday holds a preliminary hearing in the case of a Russian man who is suing US tech giant Apple for allegedly turning him gay.
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He is seeking 1 million rubles ($15,560) in damages from Apple for sending him a cryptocurrency known as GayCoin instead of the Bitcoin he had ordered.
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The bizarre civil suit has been filed in a country where casual homophobia is prevalent and a law banning “propaganda” of gay relationships to minors has stifled public activism.
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Representatives of the two sides are set to meet a judge at Moscow’s Presnensky district court for a preliminary hearing behind closed doors starting at 9:40 am (0640 GMT).
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The plaintiff, named in court papers only by his surname Razumilov, was not planning to attend in order to protect his privacy, his lawyer said.
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In his complaint, seen by AFP, he says the GayCoin cryptocurrency arrived with a note saying, “Don’t judge until you try.”
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The complaint says Razumilov downloaded a cryptocurrency app from Apple Store but received a transfer of 69 of the GayCoin instead of the Bitcoins he ordered.
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“I thought, in truth, how can I judge something without trying? I decided to try same-sex relationships,” the complainant wrote.
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“I decided to try single-sex relations. Two months later, I can say that I have got stuck in intimate relations with a representative of my sex and I can’t manage to get back.”
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‘Harm and suffering’
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The man is suing for damages for “moral harm and mental suffering”.
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“For him, this is a big blow to his reputation, because he doesn’t know how to tell his parents and he knows that he won’t be understood,” his lawyer Sapizhat Gusnieva told AFP.
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“We live in Russia after all, so these things are complicated.”
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She said that her client had ended up breaking up a stable heterosexual relationship with his girlfriend.
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Groups campaigning for gay rights in Russia point to ongoing repercussions from the homophobic law banning “propaganda” of gay relationships to minors, which allows for discrimination against gay people.
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Russia only decriminalised homosexuality in 1993 after the end of the Soviet Union and it was considered a mental illness until 1999.
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In July the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Russia over its refusal to register three associations defending LGBT rights.
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Lawyer Gusnieva argued that suing Apple is justified in this case, despite the alleged exchange taking place on a third-party app.
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“Apple allowed this company to work with them. They let people download the app. So they will have to answer for it,” she said.
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She said that on Thursday she would ask Apple for contacts of the company that put the GayCoin currency online.
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Apple’s representatives in Russia did not respond to AFP’s requests for comment.
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