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Russians say ‘nyet’ to Facebook’s rainbow profile picture

Over the weekend you might have noticed that a lot of people on Facebook used a tool by the social network to overlay their profile image with the colours of the rainbow. In case you didn’t know, that was to celebrate the US Supreme Court’s ruling in the US forcing every state to recognise same-sex marriages.

Russia has been a notorious opponent of same-sex marriages, where the country recognises neither same-sex marriage nor any other form of civil union for same-sex couples.

But instead of having the LGBT rainbow overlaid on profile pictures, many conservative Russians opted to overlay the country’s flag instead.

According to the UK’s Independent, local graphic designer Oleg Chulakov created the Photoshop tool after seeing how popular the rainbow filter was on Facebook. He decided to turn it into a web app after it was downloaded 5,000 times.

However, while Chulakov didn’t design the Russian flag overlay to express any opposition to the US court’s ruling, many Russians quickly adopted the flag with ‪#‎pridetobestraight‬ ‪and #‎pridetoberussian‬.

This happened around about the same time Vitaly Milonov, co-creator of Russia’s controversial ‘gay propaganda’ law, asked the Russian government to ban Facebook for violating said policy by use of the LGBT profile picture flag.

[Image – CC by 2.0/Kevin Goebel]

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