Russia Removes Steve Jobs Memorial After Tim Cook Comes Out

If you find yourself in St. Petersburg, Russia, and you're looking for the six-foot memorial to former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, don't bother -- it's been torn down. And it's not because the local Apple Store has the iPhone 6 Plus backordered. Could the current Apple CEO's recent coming out have something to do with it? Officials connected with the memorial aren't saying "nyet."

According to Business Insider, Maxiim Dolgopolov, chairman of ZEFS, the company responsible for funding the Jobs memorial, explained its removal in a press release to Russian media outlets. The two reasons given by Dolgopolov were: Tim Cook coming out as gay and Edward Snowden's revelations about NSA spying. (Snowden's documents suggest Apple products were used by the NSA to conduct surveillance.)

The memorial, which was a six-foot tall giant iPhone, graced a public square in St. Petersburg since 2013. It featured a large screen that showcased moments from Jobs' life, as well as scrolling quotations from his speeches and a QR code on the back that would take people who scanned it to a website.

According to ZEFS's press release explaining its removal, Dolgopolov didn't rule out one day reinstalling the structure. He did, however, say it would only return if it could be modified to instruct users to use products from companies other than Apple.

ZEFS's decision to pull the Jobs monument in the wake of Cook's coming out is hardly an isolated incident from Russians whose representatives voted unanimously in 2013 to pass a law banning all forms of "gay propaganda."

Religion Dispatches reports Russian politician Vitaly Milonov, a vocal opponent of gay rights, proposed to have Cook banned from Mother Russia for life.

"What could he bring us? The Ebola virus, AIDS, gonorrhea? They all have unseemly ties over there," Milonov�told the FlashNord website. "Ban him for life."

Milonov co-sponsored St. Petersburg's local "gay propaganda" bill before the measure was passed on the federal level.