An unintended confluence of AI, blind allegiance, and rabid homophobia is landing supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s anti-LGBTQ+ crusade in court, leading even his most faithful supporters to question the authoritarian state’s methods.

Homophobic authors of anti-LGBTQ+ posts are now regularly being charged under the very same laws meant to suppress the LGBTQ+ community in Russia, Mediazona reports.

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A raft of cases is arriving in front of magistrates accusing fans of the Russian Supreme Court’s 2023 decision outlawing the “LGBT movement” — and the total ban on so-called LGBTQ+ symbols that came with it — of violating the law.

One woman dragged before a judge, called the ban the “right decision” when it was proposed. She posted rainbows and other images in support of the ban, saying she was “fiercely against this filth.”

Her offending post on the Russian social media platform VK came with the sarcastic hashtag #YourFavoriteUnicorn, and a photo captioned, “Welcome to the LGBT kindergarten! Who is QUEER? Maybe I should join LGBT too? Lesbians are so cool! Let’s draw a rainbow!”

She was fined 1,500 rubles, or about $18.

A man fined a similar amount and sentenced to a day in jail pointed to AI as the culprit.

“I reposted a picture where Zelensky, Macron, and several other European leaders are shown with a fascist swastika and a rainbow. The FSB’s AI decided I was spreading propaganda,” he said, referring to the Russian security service.

“In court, I asked the judge about patriotic films where actors do the Nazi salute and wear swastikas on their sleeves without being sent to prison,” the man said. “But they locked me up for a day, explaining that I considered Zelensky and Macron to be fascist and gay, which is openly advertised in the media. I asked if I should officially apologize to Zelensky. In short, the AI that reads our messages is a complete moron, and we mean nothing to it.”

Judges in the cases, as well as authorities summoning the violators to court, appear to be abandoning any discretion they might have and are following the letter of the draconian law, regardless of the violators’ intent.

“I created a video criticizing LGBT, but [the police officer] took screenshots and sent them without explanation,” said one man who regularly employs the slur evropediki, or “Eurof**s,” in his posts. “The court didn’t bother to figure it out and fined me.”

The judge didn’t get his brand of humor, he complained.

In St. Petersburg, a court targeted the author of a poem titled “It’s Cool to Be Gay” posted to socials, despite its anti-LGBTQ+ message.

“Let’s hit balls / Like billiard players / But we aren’t athletes / We are homo-mast**bators,” one verse read.

And in Moscow, a resident was fined 100,000 rubles (about $1,240) for posting a video that attacked Nazis as debaucherous and gay, showing a young man shaving his head, putting on skinhead clothing, and having sex with two similar-looking men. It ended with a swastika and the phrase, “Join our ranks!!!”

The court ruled it was “LGBT propaganda.”

With the Russian government’s dual attacks on LGBTQ+ identity — both the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling and the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda laws, initiated in 2013 and expanded in 2022 — social media, books, films, television series, and advertising are subject to total censorship. Dozens of individuals are facing criminal charges under the laws, while administrative cases for “propaganda” or “extremist symbols” run into the hundreds.

Russian LGBTQ+ organizations are being dismantled and their staffs threatened.

Even a homophobic priest in the country, where the Russian Orthodox Church is a staunch supporter of Putin’s self-declared war on “Western degeneracy,” has been the victim of his own hatred.

The Polish native, a resident in Russia for nearly 25 years, posted a photo of the leader of the Moscow Catholic Archdiocese, whom he’s accused of supporting the LGBTQ+ community, next to a rainbow flag to “attract attention.”

He’s been deported back to Poland and banned from Russia.