ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA – A prominent member of Russia’s gay rights movement was convicted on Friday of promoting homosexuality under a new municipal statute that has been denounced as homophobic by international rights organizations, including Amnesty International.

Nikolay Alexeyev, the founder of Moscow Gay PRIDE, was fined the equivalent of $167 (USD)—the lowest amount permissible—n the nation’s first prosecution under the controversial new legislation, which calls for fines ranging from $167 (USD) to $16,700 (USD) for the crime of “publicly spreading information capable to harm the health, moral and spiritual development of under-age persons including forming in them deformed notions of social equality of traditional and nontraditional marital relations.”

Prosecutors accused Alexeyev of spreading homosexual “propaganda” after he was arrested for picketing in front of St. Petersburg city hall last month holding a sign that read “Homosexuality is not a perversion. Perversion is hockey on the grass and ballet on ice.” The trial is the first in Russia since the Soviet-era in which a defendant was prosecuted on a homosexualrelated charge.

In the Soviet era, LGBT persons were often imprisoned for lengthy sentences. Both Russian and international human rights groups have denounced the law as violating both the Russian national constitution and the Geneva Convention on Human Rights. “Such laws threaten freedom of expression and fuel discrimination against the city’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Director for Europe and Central Asia, in a statement.

“Russian leaders are floating with the current and close their eyes on the prosecution of homosexuals because for the Kremlin a majority is always right especially when this view is also backed by the Orthodox Church,” explained Valery Borshchev, a member of the Presidential Council on Human Rights, a board that advises the Kremlin’s leadership. “It is a homophobic law and it makes Russia look very uncivilized in the eyes of the civilized world.”

Anti-gay ordinances similar to St. Petersburg’s have recently been passed in the Arkhangelsk and Ryazan, and two additional cities, Novosibirsk and Samara, are likewise considering such measures, as is the Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament. Polls show that 85 percent of Russians consider homosexuality to be morally unacceptable.