Russian Lawmaker Wants to Ban 100-Ruble, Says it Will 'Harm' Kids

The 100-ruble note, worth about $3 USD has one Russian lawmaker seeing red, and calling for the level of currency to be banned on the grounds that it will turn children gay, according to Gay Star News.

The Moscow Times reports (via Russian newspaper Izvestia) , Roman Khudyakov, a member of parliament for the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, wrote a letter to Russia's Central Bank, complaining about the currency, which depicts a statue of the Greek god Apollo on the Bolshoi Theater, one of Russia's main cultural symbols. He says the image on the 150 x 65 millimeter note shows "intimate parts of the body" and that the currency should come with an "18+" rating, similar to films.

On the note, Apollo, somewhat disrobed and covered with a fig leaf, is riding a four-horse chariot on top of the theater.

"You can see clearly that Apollo is naked, you can see his genitalia," Khudyakov told Reuters TV. "I submitted a parliamentary request and forwarded it directly to the head of the central bank asking for the banknote to be brought into line with the law protecting children and to remove this Apollo."

The lawmaker is referring to Russia's highly controversial "homosexual propaganda" law, which bans LGBT rights to "protect" minors.

"As bills of that denomination often get into the hands of children as pocket money, I strongly request your help in changing the design of the banknote or otherwise bringing it into accordance with current legislative regulations," Khudyakov was quoted as saying in his letter to Central Bank.

Pavel Ivchenkov, a lawyer for the tax and business law firm Nalogovik, said the 100-ruble note "can in fact be considered as 'information of a pornographic nature.'"

"That is, it can be regarded as 'information containing a graphic depiction or description of human genitalia,'" he added.

The Moscow Times notes that officials from the Central Bank will most likely not change the note, as it would be far too expensive to replace the commonly circulated bill.

Deputy chief of Moscow's municipal bar association, Mikhail Kushnaryov, said that if experts did find that the bill was inappropriate for children, "then school textbooks on human anatomy would also have to be banned."