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Growing up in the Western world (Canada to be precise) I have been spoiled with rights. Women can vote, gay marriage is legal, a single parent or couple of any genders can adopt a child, and more. Also as a Canadian, my family are all immigrants and I take pride in learning about various countries my family comes from. And then I learned that a country near and dear to me is growing more and more homophobic. Thanks, Ukraine.
With most of my Ukrainian family dead or living far away with little English skills, I took learning about this country upon myself. It's almost forgotten about, being directly beside Russia and near Poland with similar languages and alphabets, it's easy to be ignored. Not speaking much Ukrainian is makes things worse. But whenever Ukraine gets on the news, I get happy. My little country is being noticed! Hooray!
Unfortunately, I'm not that proud.
Let's have a small history lesson first. So homosexuality was illegal in most countries for a time. Because it was thought that the people were mentally unwell or weren't quite right in the head. But Ukraine was the first former Soviet country to decriminalize homosexuality in 1991. In fact, Kiev, the capital city had gay night clubs and even gay rallies and marches. Which is great. And suddenly twentyish years later, a bill is on its way through to being passed will ban all homosexual propaganda.
What is homosexual propaganda, you may ask? Firstly, I thought it was perhaps posters or commercials about how everyone should be gay. Gay is the new black, it's in style. Why aren't you gay yet? Everyone must be gay! And if that were the case, I'd understand the bill. But no. In this case, homosexual propaganda simply means openly gay people. As in, gay pride parades are bad, night clubs are bad, holding hands with your same-sex lover is bad. Brokeback Mountain will not be screened anymore. In other words, if the bill does get passed, it simply means gay = bad. No way around it.
All of this was started by various churches and leaders who find sexual minorities to be well..bad and takes away their own rights. Granted, I'm writing this with a huge bias- I support pride events and support my friends of the LGBT community and I'm religious at the same. What's worse is my little country is getting the bad spotlight. Oy-yoy-yoy. I digress.
What's worse is the violence around all of this. Various LGBT supporters are getting beaten for being themselves and standing up for what they believe in. The first ever pride parade back in May had to be cancelled due to possible violence. Previously, Taras Karasiychuk had been targeted as he was trying to go to a secret rally with various LGBT members. It turned out to be not so secret as nearly one hundred and fifty protestors showed up in a violent attack. But Taras Karasiychuk did suffer a concussion form his own attack, but later stated, "We need to be more visible in everyday life. We have to provoke this conversation. Everyone has to ask themselves, why they don't like gays." (source)
Not all of Ukraine has this mindset of course, but many are in favour of the bill and are willing to have it pass.
Unfortunately, all information found for this article was either published in October or July of this year- anything more recent isn't available, at least in English. And I'm sure my limited Ukrainian would only get me so far. So it's still up in the air, the results of the bill, whether it will be passed or not. Hopefully the LGBT supporters in Ukraine can get the ball rolling to make a difference again. They obviously did it once, they can do it again if they keep this mindset up.
Sources: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19881905 and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2147385/Horrific-moment-thugs-attack-head-gay-rights-group-Ukraine-forced-cancel-parade-hijacked-neo-Nazi-zealots.html
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