Actor Ivan Okhlobystin, who had previously proposed burning all gay people alive in an oven, has written an open letter to President Vladimir Putin, urging him to restore a Soviet-era law that banned homosexual relations.
But his publications of the letter on Twitter's TwitLonger website, intended for posts that go beyond the usual 140-character limit, appeared to keep disappearing.
Okhlobystin said on his Twitter account on Tuesday that he repeatedly had tried to publish the letter on TwitLonger.com, but each time the text appeared to have been deleted with hours or even minutes of publication.
"I didn't delete" the text, Okhlobystin said in Twitter messages. "Somebody deleted for me!"
In the letter that was finally posted on Russia's VKontakte social network, Okhlobystin asked Putin to restore an article of the Soviet-era Criminal Code that made homosexual relationships punishable by a prison term.
The law banning gay propaganda, which Russia adopted last summer, didn't go far enough "because the existence of officially registered societies of homosexuals is by itself a direct advertisement of homosexuality," Okhlobystin said in the letter.
Last month, Okhlobystin told fans in Novosibirsk, "I'd put [gay people] all alive in an oven ... it's a living danger to my children."
Okhlobystin, who was an Orthodox priest before being suspended in 2010, is most famous for starring in a Russian take on the medical sitcom "Interny," and also serves as creative director of Russian cell phone retailer Yevroset.
In response to his proposal to burn gay people, a group of almost 20 Russian and foreign gay rights groups have sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, asking him to reconsider doing business Yevroset.
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