RUSSIA: Anti-Gay Lawmaker Tells Postal Service To Reject Tom Of Finland Stamps

Notorious anti-gay lawmaker Vitaly Milonov has demanded that Russia's postal service refuse to deliver letters that bear the Tom Of Finland stamps recently issued by Finland's government.

Speaking to the TASS news agency, he said: “They are basically elements of homosexual propaganda, which is banned in our country.” “I ask the leadership of Russian Post to pay close attention to this request. In addition, I urge the Finns themselves, our close neighbours, to refrain from using these stamps when sending letters to Russia.” After the stamps went on sale on in September in Finland, Itella reported that it had received pre-orders from 178 countries, and that the range of stamps were the best selling in its history.

Milonov has led numerous anti-gay demonstrations, some of which have resulted in violence against LGBT Russians. If you ordered any of those stamps, maybe you should send Milonov a postcard.

Tom Of Finland Stamps Are A Hit

Finland's postal service reports that sales of its Tom Of Finland stamps are breaking all their records. Via Gay Star News:

Stamps commemorating Finnish gay erotic artist Touko Laaksonen, who published his drawings under the name Tom of Finland, have been the biggest sellers in the history of Finland’s Posti postal service, with people pre-ordering the stamps in 178 countries. The stamps went on sale on Monday, with the biggest overseas orders coming from Sweden, Britain, the United States and France. An exhibition of Tom of Finland’s drawings and letters is being held in Tampere’s new postal museum to coincide with the release of the stamps and there were long queues outside the museum when the stamps began being sold there yesterday. The demand for the stamps has taken the postal service by surprise. ‘We haven't seen this kind of interest before in Posti's history and we probably won't again soon,’ Posti development chief Markku Penttinen told Finnish news service Yle Uutiset.

Matt Barber Has The Stamp Sadz

"This is a man who was known for a perverse sexual appetite for teenage, runaway, drug-addicted boys and the fact that this Obama administration and the postal service would choose to ignore that and go with the propaganda and the hype that this guy was some kind of hero and a pro-LGBT martyr – it just boggles the mind. That [Harvey Milk] would get his own stamp and that this other homosexual activist would get a stamp honoring a lifestyle that has led to the AIDS epidemic, that has led to the spread of syphilis and STDs and a decline in our culture's morality, just speaks to how far we have fallen as a nation." - Hate group leader Matt Barber, speaking to OneNewsNow. The "other homosexual artist" Barber refers to is Tom Of Finland, who will be honored this fall by Finland's postal service.

Finland Issues Tom Of Finland Stamps

In September, Finland's postal service will release several stamps that feature the work of famed gay artist Tom Of Finland. Via FinnBay:

Itella is owned by the state of Finland, providing postal, logistics and e-commerce services in Finland. Tom of Finland or Touko Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991) is one of the most popular Finnish artists in Finland, who focused on drawing stylized homoerotic fetish art. He produced over 3,500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits with tight or partially removed clothing. “His emphatically masculine homoerotic drawings have attained iconic status in their genre and had an influence on, for instance, pop culture and fashion. In his works, Tom of Finland utilized the self-irony and humor typical of subcultures,” says Itella.

If you embiggen the image, you'll see that there appears to be three stamps on the page, including one of just the bare butt.