[3] Prior to the Bayev judgement, sociologist Paul Johnson stated that "[t]here is an emerging consensus of opinion" that the Russian gay propaganda law in both its existence and enforcement violated the ECHR.
[4] Justine De Kerf predicted that the anti-gay propaganda law could not be upheld in Strasbourg because "this type of legislation even threatens the very concepts the Court is bound to protect: universal human rights and the principles of democracy".
[3] The Council of Europe's advisory body on constitutional law, the Venice Commission, passed a resolution stating that bans on "propaganda of homosexuality" "are incompatible with ECHR and international human rights standards".
[5] The case was heard by the third section of the ECtHR, composed of the judges Helena Jäderblom (Sweden), Luis López Guerra (Spain), Helen Keller (Switzerland), Dmitry Dedov (Russia), Alena Poláčková (Slovakia), Georgios Sergides (Cyprus), and Jolien Schukking (Netherlands).
[8] The court considered that Russia did not provide "convincing and weighty reasons justifying the difference in treatment" between speech related to same-sex versus opposite-sex relationships.
Human rights lawyer Gabriel Armas-Cardona states, "Dedov didn't dissent out of a bias in favor of his country, but from a fundamentally different world view than that of the Western judges.
[12] Ghent University researchers Pieter Cannoot and Claire Poppelwell-Scevak note that the judgement is very strongly worded, such that "the Court could even be seen to go have gone so far as ridiculing the Russian Government's arguments".