A Russian bakery in Siberia has been fined $150 for hanging a sign at its entrance that banned LGBT people from entering.
The Ipakov Brothers bakery in the city of Kemerovo placed a wooden sign near its entrance that said “F*****s are not allowed” when it opened in February. The bakery’s co-owner, Anton Ipatov, told the 360tv.ru news website at the time that the sign didn’t discriminate against anyone.
The Kemerovo central district court has found the bakery’s co-owner, Anton Ipatov, guilty of “inciting hatred” and fined him 10,000 rubles.
The court said that the sign “humiliates homosexuals as … a group of people distinguished on the basis of sexual orientation” and negatively impacts others’ feelings toward LGBT people.
Ipatov told the court that he hung the sign because of his “personal convictions,” the court’s decision reads.
The presence of non-heterosexual people in his shop could “affect his children,” the court cited him as saying. He added that “he makes natural food” and “everything unnatural is alien to him.”
Previously, the Kemerovo directorate of the Federal Antimonopoly Service planned to investigate the bakery for consumer protection law violations after Ipatov alleged that his competitors produced “poison,” the MBKh news website reported.
In 2017, a bakery in St. Petersburg owned by prominent Orthodox activist German Sterligov came under fire from LGBT activists for hanging a similar sign in its window to ban gay customers. Ipatov told 360tv.ru that online observers have compared the Ipanov Brothers bakery with Sterligov’s chain of bakeries.
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