Doug Stanglin

USA TODAY

A Russian lawmaker wants the Russian postal service to ban a popular series of Finnish gay-themed stamps as "homosexual propaganda," the TASS news agency reports.

The commemorative stamps, issued by the Finnish Postal Service, Itella, in September feature the artwork of gay erotic artist Touko Laaksonen, aka Tom of Finland.

Works by the artist, who died in 1991, span four decades and are featured in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Russian backlash began after Finnish broadcaster Yle Uutiset tested Russian reaction by sending packages plastered with the newly released stamps, showing, among other things, muscular men entwined, to addresses in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

"We wanted to test how the Russian postal service and customs would respond to the stamps," a report by Yle said, referring to recent legislation in Russia outlawing homosexual propaganda. The law also makes it illegal to distribute material that depicts homosexuality in a positive light.

Yle said the first of its packages was picked up without a problem by its Moscow correspondent Marja Manninen.

"I just collected the parcel from the post office. It actually got here yesterday, which is amazingly fast," Manninen said, according to the agency. "The stamps didn't arouse the slightest bit of interest, not even when I pointed them out to the postal workers. They're happy so long as the postage is paid in full."

But the stamps clearly did not sit well with Vitaly Mironov, co-author of St. Petersburg's ban on "gay propaganda," who tells Tass this weekend: 'I ask the leadership of Russian Post to pay close attention to this request. In addition, I urge the Finns themselves, our close neighbors, to refrain from using these stamps when sending letters to Russia."

Markku Penttinen, development director for the Finnish Postal Service, says the stamps have been very popular worldwide, with tens of thousands of the stamps pre-ordered from 170 countries, Forbes reports. The top five orders came from Finland, England, Sweden, the U.S. and France, it said.

Penttinen adds that Finland issued stamps featuring naked women's bodies in 1949, in a sauna-themed edition.