Russian company took down iPhone sculpture because Cook is gay -- By Miriam Elder, Buzz Feed

Back in January 2013, a Russian company called ZEFS put up a sculpture outside a St. Petersburg university devoted to the iPhone, the love of Russian hipsters everywhere

On Friday, a day after Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote an essay saying he was gay, ZEFS took the sculpture down. In a statement sent around on Monday, it said the iPhone was now “public propaganda for sodomy.”

“After Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly called for sodomy, the sculpture was dismantled in line with Russia’s federal law protecting children from information that propagandizes the rejection of traditional family values,” the statement said.

The statement cited Maxim Dolgopolov, the head of ZEFS, as saying everyone should stop using the iPhone, which, he said, was more dangerous than cigarettes or drugs.

“Now, when it’s clear that iPhones are more dangerous than cigarettes or drugs, when in addition to its technology this brand becomes a symbol for sodomistic sin, reasonable people in the world will start rejecting Apple products en masse,” he said.

“Since the public sodomy propaganda from the head of Apple, the sculpture now carries two meanings: antagonistic to our Russian culture and to Russian law,” Dolgopolov said, explaining his decision to dismantle it.

ZEFS didn’t stop there. It also said the revelations about Apple by Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower now living in Russia, also encouraged its decision to remove the sculpture.
“What’s more, in light of recent revelations of former NSA agent Edward Snowden, it is known that Apple’s technology practically spies on its users around the world, informing US security services about them,” the statement said.