A court in St.
Petersburg has dropped an LGBT propaganda case against a popular book shop that was fined previously this year for offering works by authors like Susan Sontag and Olivia Laing.In April, law enforcement authorities carried out a search at the 100-year-old bookstore Podpisniye Izdaniya, ordereding shop staff members to remove lots of books on LGBTQ+ issues and feminism, in addition to those authored by dissident and foreign agent writers.The following month, St.
Petersburgs Kuibyshevsky District Courtordered Podpisniye Izdaniya to pay a fine of 800,000 rubles ($10,000) after discovering it guilty of dispersing literature that promotes so-called LGBT propaganda.According to the courts press service, an expert review by Herzen University last month concluded that 37 books sold at Podpisniye Izdaniya contained psychological and linguistic indications of propaganda promoting non-traditional sexual relationships, gender reassignment or refusal to procreate.Among the books in question was Laings Everybody: A Book About Freedom.However, the Kuibyshevsky District Court later ruled that the brand-new infraction, recognized on April 10, fell outside the statute of constraints and ended procedures, the courts press service said Thursday.It stays uncertain whether district attorneys mean to appeal the decision.Russias so-called LGBT propaganda law was initially introduced in 2013 and broadened in late 2022 to prohibit representations of same-sex relationships and non-traditional lifestyles throughout all media, including books.Following the 2022 growth, significant book shop chains started pulling LGBTQ+ literature from their racks in a wave of preemptive self-censorship.