On July 24, 2013, less than a month after Vladimir Putin had signed an anti-gay propaganda law, Alexey Davydov, an LGBT activist, was arrested outside of the Russian State Children’s Library as he unwrapped a hand-made banner reading “It’s normal to be gay.”

“Which law are you using to arrest me?” Davydov asked two policemen reaching to take him by his arms. “It’s a children establishment here,” grunted the one on the left. Davydov was ushered into a police van.

In Russia’s Administrative Code, a law known as Article 6.21 had been recently passed that banned the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors.” Davydov became the first person to be charged with breaking the new law, which was his plan —to be detained and to use the incident to challenge the law.

But the 36-year-old Davydov died of kidney failure two months later, before his case was heard by a court. The law was consequently upheld when three other activists, Nikolai Alekseev, Dmitry Isakov and Yaroslav Evtushenko appealed its legality to the Constitutional Court of Russia. Since it ruled that banning “gay propaganda to minors” was a lawful move, it has had “a huge cooling effect” on activists, according to Dmitry Bartenev, a St. Petersburg lawyer who has defended many LGBTQ activists.