Catalyst for change. War against homophobic Russia gives hope for a new policy of Ukraine on same -sex marriages - NYT

23-year-old military physician Alexander Shadsky, like everyone on the front, fights death. But he is also embarrassed by another fear: what when he is killed and his boyfriend does not know about it in time, before the funeral? According to the law, commanders should notify the death of a serviceman to parents, wife or other close relatives. But in Ukraine, which does not recognize same -sex marriages or civilian unions, this does not apply to same -sex partners.

Shadsky is worried that if he does not return home, his boyfriend Vitaliy will not know his death and will not be able to say goodbye. "My mom doesn't know about Vitalik," he told NyT correspondent. "I want to tell her when I get home. " Alexander is one of the hundreds, and possibly thousands of LGBT-military, who have faced the absence of legal rights with them and their partners, which becomes a significant problem.

In Ukraine, they do not have the right to attend a hospitalized partner, share property, take care of the children of the deceased, hide the partner who died in the war, or receive assistance from the state in connection with his death.

The war gave additional impetus to the initiatives of activists to legalize same -sex marriages: a petition was on the table of President Vladimir Zelensky, which calls for the same -sex partners to have the same rights as heterosexual couples, including the right to marry. She collected almost 30,000 signatures, sufficient to consider the head of state. "At this time, every day can be the last," the petition said.

Its author-24-year-old Anastasia Sovaenko, English teacher from Zaporozhye, identifies herself as a bisexual. She says that after reading an article about heterosexual soldiers who are in a hurry to marry their brides before going to the war, she felt sadness, anger and disappointment, because same -sex couples are deprived of this opportunity. "They will not be able to visit their other half in the hospital when something happens," Sowenko said.

- If they have a baby, then they will be taken away from the parent who is alive, if it is not a biological mother. Because by law they are not relatives, but just two strangers.

" Defenders of gay rights hope that Zelensky, a former comic actor who gives a war against Russia as a global battle for liberal-democratic values, will see in the fight for equal rights in marriages the chance to improve the reputation of Ukraine, which became a candidate for joining the European Union, and help bring it closer to the West.

At the same time, the Parliament of Ukraine is still divided on the rights of LGBT, and the majority of the majority, the servant of the people, did not decide on this issue. The idea of ​​legalization of same -sex marriages is faced with serious resistance in the country, where the Orthodox Church of the Moscow model and conservative customs are deeply rooted, NYT reports.

Ensuring the rights of the LGBT community has become more relevant at a time when the aggressor seized a large territory of Ukraine and plans to annex it to Russia, where sexual minorities regularly face official and unofficial discrimination, homophobia and social stigmatization. In Ukraine, LGBT warriors who fight with Russian invaders have helped to improve the attitude to sexual minorities, the article states.

“Defending the country, we expose Russian propaganda that all gays are communists, Marxists and tuned against Ukraine. We have destroyed these homophobic myths, fighting with the Russians and risking our lives for Ukraine, ”says Viktor Pylypenko, who fought in the Donbass, and is now the head of the unification of the LGBT military union and our allies.

The telephone survey of 2000 respondents conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed that in the last six years the number of Ukrainians who are "negative" to LGBT has decreased from about 60 percent to 38. At the same time, the Pew Research Center survey in 2019 showed The year, 69 percent of Ukrainians stated that society should not approve of homosexuality. War and death have put forward a problem on the surface.

Andriy Mimulakhin manages the center of our world, which protects the rights of LGBT. In February, his boyfriend, 38-year-old Andriy Markov, went to the army. Since then, according to Maimulakin, he thinks every day that they will happen to the house they have erected together, and with their three Terriers, Archer, Astra and Vega, if the brands die. The alarm became a great last month when Mark, who was a chef in the National Guard of Ukraine, was seriously injured during Russian shelling.

“If he gets well so much to call me, I will be missed inside. But what when he is in a coma? No one will let me, ”said 52-year-old Mayulakin. In 2014, he and Mark filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, arguing that Ukraine would discriminate them on the basis of sexual orientation, which is a violation of the human rights Convention. The complaint is still under consideration.

22-year-old Oleksa Lung told NYT that he was one of the most difficult decisions in his life-whether to visit the funeral of Roman Tkachenko 21-year-old, his former Boyfrand, who died in May near Kharkov. "How would I explain his mother, who I am? What did I do there, where did Roman know?" Asks Lung. He still went to the funeral. “We were not married, we had no longer had a relationship, so of course I did not expect that I could have any rights to his body.

But I wanted to see him before he was buried forever, ”Lung says. *** President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded to a petition on the legalization of same -sex marriages on August 2. He wrote that, according to the Constitution of Ukraine, the marriage "is based on the free consent of the woman and the man", and in the conditions of martial law the basic law cannot be changed.

According to the Head of State, the Cabinet of Ministers processed options for legalization in Ukraine of a registered civil partnership. Zelensky appealed to Prime Minister Denis Shmigal and asked to consider the issue raised in the petition. Same -sex couples in Ukraine are not legally eligible for marriage, cannot own property together, imitate the property of a partner or partner, and collaboration of children together.