Commentary
Stuck in limbo: Ukrainian government leaving LGBTQ community behind
Country saw years of steady progress before war began
BY BOGDAN GLOBA | “It’s not the right time.”
This is the most frequent response received when advocating for the LGBTQI+ community, but the truth is it is never a suitable time for changes or progress, or even for a discussion about human rights for minorities such as LGBTQI+ people. Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Ukrainian Republic regained independence, a lot of progress was made. For example, Ukraine was the first country out of the post-USSR ones that decriminalized punishment for homosexuality (the Soviet Union criminalized homosexuality with seven years of imprisonment or labor camp detention.)
In addition, following the Revolution of Dignity, when the Ukraine’s Parliament passed progressive anti-discrimination bills, later they passed the amendment to the labor code that protects from discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). An important note: The new amendment to the labor code is still the most advanced in Europe, as many countries have adopted legislation protecting discrimination based on sexual orientation without including gender identity. Even the judicial branch made some contributions. Ukraine’s constitution in Article 24 bans discrimination in general; at the same time, it doesn’t have SOGI in the list, but instead has an open list. In May 2014, after two decades, the Supreme Specialized Court of Ukraine wound down legislative debates and published a constitutional review that interpreted the constitution as banning any form of discrimination, including based on SOGI.
Unfortunately, since 2016, Ukraine’s Parliament has stopped making any legislative progress towards equality for LGBTQI+ people, and all changes have moved to the government executive level. But, even though Ukraine has changed a lot culturally and politically, among the biggest and most crucial puzzles remains unsolved — same-sex marriages or, a bare minimum for the gay community, civil partnership.
Mission impossible (or not)
The biggest roadblock to same-sex marriage in Ukraine is the constitution.
Back in 1996, when the first version of the constitution was written, Ukrainian MPs limited the institution of marriage only to men and women, preventing any marriage debates for generations. The mission to change the constitution means the LGBTQI+ movement needs to elect a supermajority in the Verkhovna Rada (300 MPs out of 450) three times, the Constitutional Court needs to approve changes, and the president needs to sign the bill.
Other examples of stalled progress make the situation look even more bleak.
Bill 5488 was introduced in May 2021 as part of a long-term affiliation process with the European Union, and part of an Action plan for National Human Rights Strategy and many U.N. resolutions, including recommendations from the U.N. Human Rights Council. This bill would change the Criminal Code to clarify language in Article 161 to add hate crimes protections for LGBTQI+ persons and other marginalized groups.
Unfortunately, the bill was dead on arrival and never voted on in the Parliament, even though it would provide protection from hate crimes not only based on sexual orientation and gender identity, but also based on race, religion, color, language, gender and disability and many more. Broadening protections against hate crimes has broad support overall. Following threats on KyivPride’s march in 2016, even the Orthodox Church of Ukraine made a statement declaring the physical attack unacceptable.
Until now, the Ukrainian Parliament held down the “last fort” of traditional family values and didn’t move forward with legislation that included SOGI. Meanwhile, LGBTQI+ Ukrainians continue to lose trust in their government’s ability or desire to protect them. Only this year, the Human Rights Ombudsman reported 17 cases of hate crimes based on SOGI and only one verdict in the court. Human rights organizations may report hundreds more hate crime cases every year (Ukraine human rights organization Nash Mir Center reported 186 documented hate crimes based on SOGI in 2020), but still, without adopting Bill 5488 or similar legislation, there won’t be an effective system preventing these hate crimes and providing justice for minorities and marginalized groups.
Another existential challenge for the LGBTQI+ community will be adopting a civil partnership bill (as same-sex marriage is realistically not possible in the coming decades). “Preserving the institution of marriage” only for straight families, but letting same-sex couples have civil recognition, could let Ukraine join the ranks of other democratic and progressive countries, while appeasing some of the conservative sector’s demands. In most European countries, a civil partnership law was the middle step before same-sex marriages were fully recognized. That institution is long overdue and most needed in Ukraine right now, while thousands of LGBTQI+ are serving in the army with a civilian partner back at home. For straight couples, if something happens with a military partner (wounded or killed), a civilian partner will obtain a variety of government benefits, from cash support to housing. In the case of same-sex couples, they are invisible to the government and have no help or recognition. A civilian person has no right to even bury their partner’s body.
The Ukrainian government demonstrates insufficient desire to fix LGBTQI+ inequality
LGBTQI+ Ukrainians are equal enough to serve your country but not equal enough to get the same benefits of straight couples, or to receive adequate protections against hate crimes. The Union of the LGBT Military in Ukraine (a non-government organization) already includes a few hundred openly LGBTQI+ members and a thousand queer military who follow their activities. While they actively fight to protect the republic, they sincerely hope politicians and government have their back. And as many politicians repeat kumbaya about all Ukrainian soldiers being heroes, it does look like they believe LGBTQI+ heroes don’t need the same benefits or support as their colleague’s heterosexual ones.
Left behind
Historically, the most significant and quickest progress for the LGBTQI+ community in Ukraine has happened (2014-2016) in combination with a few factors: The process of joining a visa-free regime with the Schengen zone and integration into the European Union, the cultural revolution when Ukrainian start to watching more Netflix and Western media than Russian channel, and U.S. government investment of great resources to promoting democratic values, including many cultural and exchange programs which help to bolster civil society and the LGBTQI+ human rights movement in Ukraine.
Unfortunately, with the changing power in the White House in 2016, the U.S. government’s priority shifted dramatically, and the Ukrainian LGBTQI+ community was left with markedly less support in the fight for their civil rights with the Ukrainian government, at the same time fighting back against Russian anti-LGBTQ propaganda, the Russian orthodox church’s lobby, and rising right-wing organizations. To add insult to injury, a few representatives from the U.S. Congress came down to Kyiv to participate in a prayer breakfast and lobby for traditional family values, including banning “gay propaganda.” In fact, a group of U.S. congressmen who came to Ukraine’s parliament to lobby for a ban on “LGBTQI+ propaganda” was led by U.S. Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.). The same Vargas, who is a member of the Congressional Equality Caucus, has a 100 percent score LGBTQI+ friendly rating by the organization Human Rights Campaign and is a member of the Democratic party (which by many press releases in favor of protection of the LGBTQI+ community abroad) who represents the greatest state of California. Until now, it was only a delegation representing the U.S. Congress and including member of Congressional Equality Caucus, which made a trip to Ukraine to talk about LGBTQI+ issues, but just sadly, they talk about the need to criminalize the queer community, not share experiences of how the U.S. navigated many discussions and made gay marriage possible in the U.S.
At the same time, the European Union is losing the opportunities to stand for the human rights for LGBTQI+ in Ukraine even though the European Commission and other institutions have a lot of tools in the box to be more actively advocating for equality. Unfortunately, integration into the EU does not require recognition of same-sex marriages, as the EU doesn’t regulate marriage standards for members, and after Ukraine passed anti-discrimination legislation and banned the bare minimum of protecting the LGBTQI+ community from discrimination in the workplace, European bureaucrats checked all boxes and lost political interest in any advocacy for the queer community.
The greatest example was a few weeks window in 2022 when the EU was considering Ukrainian application to become a candidate for a member of the European Union, and the Eurocommision passed to the Ukrainian government must to do list which included the ratification Istanbul Convention but failed to mention hate crime bill there, what was already in Parliament and ready to vote, even more — less sensitive and controversial then Istanbul Convention (religion organization was massively oppose ratification on affair “gender ideology” and actively pushing back in parliaments many years.)
The last miles of the equality marathon
Ukraine did make enormous progress toward equality for the LGBTQI+ community in the past. More than that; the newish Ukrainian society is much more tolerant, welcoming and friendly. In 2015, KyivPride had a few hundred activists — more than 10,000 people participated in the last one. Surprisingly, most of them were straight people. Ukraine has the biggest movement of LGBTQI+ soldiers in Europe, the larger parents of queer children movement and many more. The picture becomes even brighter if you look at the map and realize all regional countries are going backward on LGBTQI+ issues. Belarus and Russia criminalized homosexuality back in their wish to relive the Soviet Union. Still, even Poland has a free LGBTQI+ zone movement where some regional counties declare themself free from the LGBTQI+ community. On that background, Ukraine looks like the most promising and leading country in the region. Only the Ukrainian government took a nap on the last miles of a marathon.
How can we shake the Ukrainian government and help them stop lingering on the most essential legislation for the LGBTQI+ community, and end the inequality battle in Ukraine? We can start actively using our diplomacy again. For example, Congress can send a delegation to exchange experiences on how they pass the Marriage Equality Act. The White House and State Department can be more proactive in working groups for the implementation of the U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership, which includes the Ukraine government’s obligation to pass the hate crime bill, The Department of Justice can organize education program for its Ukrainian counterpart and help them to learn from the U.S. experience on preventing hate crimes. And as we are a country with the largest number of LGBTQI+ envoys in the government per square foot, can we use them at least once for the greatest good?
LGBTQI+ as national security for the US
The important nuance that many experts miss is the LGBTQI+ issue in Ukraine and Eastern Europe (and even broader) is a more complicated issue than we think. One of the self-declared reasons Russia justifies its war and invasion of Ukraine is “traditional family values” and their preventing Slavic people from biting the forbidden fruit of GayEurope. When the Russian army took over Mariupol, the biggest TV story on the Russian government channels was a video of how they found the “US strategic center of gays and lesbians in Mariupol.” The fact is that was an office of the local non-government organization that works with USAID on humanitarian projects and happens to have some posters from KyivPride. But even this Russian crusade against liberal values in Europe is not so damaging as their professional disinformation, work, and influences on American society with a false narrative. Right at this moment, thousands of Russians somewhere in a troll farm in the Crimea are making sure for the millions of U.S. citizens in the coming election, the most important issue will be what restroom to choose instead of social security reform.
Nina Jankowich, an expert on government strategic communication, in her book How to Lose the Information War gave a few examples of Russian misinformation campaigns that started in Ukraine but had real consequences on the US presidential election in 2020. She asks a question in her book: “The U.S. and the Western world have finally begun to wake up to the threat of attack from Russia … what can the West do about it?”
From my perspective as a Ukrainian by birth, American by choice, and gay by nature, the answer is simple: What if we start not talking about values but implementing them? What if, bit by bit, we will all be together to fight for democratic values and principles? And maybe Russians will never choose another matrix, but our matrix will be stronger and more resilient to the “Evil Empire.”
Bogdan Globa is the president and co-founder of QUA – LGBTQ Ukrainians in America, a former assistant to the Human Rights Committee chair in the Verkhovna Rada (2014-2016) co-founder and CEO of Fulcrum (2012-2016), an LGBTQI+ organization.
Commentary
Protecting the trans community is not optional for elected allies and candidates
One of oldest political tactics is blaming vulnerable group for societal woes
Being an ally to the trans community is not a conditional position for me, nor should it be for any candidate. My allyship doesn’t hinge on polling, focus groups, or whether courage feels politically convenient. At a time when trans people, especially trans youth of color, are under coordinated attack, elected officials and candidates must do more than offer quiet support. We must take a public and solid stand.
History shows us how these moments begin. One of the oldest political tactics is to single out the most vulnerable and blame them for society’s anxieties — not because they are responsible, but because they are easier to blame than those with power and protection. In Nazi Germany, Jewish people were primarily targeted, but they were not the only demographic who suffered elimination. LGBTQ people, disabled people, Romani communities, political dissidents, and others were also rounded up, imprisoned, and killed. Among the earliest acts of fascistic repression was the destruction of Berlin’s Institute for Sexual Science, a pioneering center for gender-affirming care and LGBTQ research. These books and medical records were among the first to be confiscated and burned. It is not a coincidence that these same communities are now the first to suffer under this regime, they are our canaries in the coal mine signaling what’s to come.
Congress, emboldened by the rhetoric of the Donald Trump campaign, recently passed HR 3492 to criminalize healthcare workers who provide gender-affirming healthcare with fines and imprisonment. This bill, sponsored by celebrity politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene, puts politics and headlines over people and health outcomes. Healthcare that a number of cis-gendered people also benefit from byway of hair regeneration and surgery, male and female breast augmentation, hormone replacement therapy etc. Even when these bills targeting this care do not pass, they do real damage. They create fear among patients, legal uncertainty for providers, and instability for clinics that serve the most marginalized people in our communities.
Here in D.C., organizations like Planned Parenthood and Whitman-Walker Health are lifelines for many communities. They provide gender-affirming care alongside primary care, mental health services, HIV treatment, and preventative medicine. When healthcare is politicized or criminalized, people don’t wait for court rulings — they delay care, ration medication, or disappear from the system entirely.
As a pharmacist, I know exactly what that means. These are life-saving medications. Continuity of care matters. Criminalizing and politicizing healthcare does not protect children or families — it puts lives at risk.
Instead of centering these realities, political discourse has been deliberately diverted toward a manufactured panic about trans women in sports. Let me be clear: trans women deserve to be protected and allowed to compete just like anyone else. Athletics have always included people with different bodies, strengths, and abilities. Girls and women will always encounter competitors who are stronger or faster — that is not a gender or sports crisis, it is the nature of competition.
Sports are meant to teach fairness, mutual respect, and the shared spirit of competition — not suspicion or exclusion. We should not police young people’s bodies, and we should reject attempts to single out trans youth as a political distraction. Families and doctors should be the authority on sex and gender identity.
This narrative has been cynically amplified by the right, but too often Democrats have allowed it to take hold rather than forcefully rejecting it. It is imperative to pay attention to what is happening — and to push back against every attempt to dehumanize anyone for political gain.
Trans people have always been part of our communities and our democracy. Protecting the most vulnerable is not radical — it is the foundation of a just society. My work is grounded in that commitment, and I will not waver from it. I’m proud to have hired trans political team Down Ballot to lead my campaign for DC Council At Large. We need more ally leaders of all stages to stand up for the LGBTQ+ community. We must let elected detractors know that when they come for them, then they come for all of us. We cannot allow Fox News and social media trolls to create a narrative that scares us away from protecting marginalized populations. We must stand up and do what’s right.
Anything less is not leadership.
Rep. Oye Owolewa is running for an at-large seat on the D.C. Council.
Commentary
America is going in the wrong direction for intersex children
Lawmakers are criminalizing care for trans youth, while permitting irreversible harm to intersex babies
I live with the consequences of what America is willing to condone in the name of “protecting children.”
When I was young, doctors and adults made irreversible decisions about my body without my informed consent. They weren’t responding to an emergency. They were responding to discomfort with innate physical differences and the social and medical pressure to make a child’s body conform to a rigid female-male binary. That’s the part people like to skip over when they talk about “child welfare”: the harm didn’t begin with my identity. It started with adults deciding my healthy body needed fixing.
That’s why the hypocrisy unfolding right now from statehouses to Capitol Hill feels so familiar, and so dangerous.
While harmful medical practices on intersex children, the nearly 2 percent born with differences in one or more of their physical sex characteristics, have been ongoing in the U.S. for decades, until recently, there was no law specifically condoning it.
This month, House Republicans passed one of the most extreme anti-trans bills in modern American history, advancing legislation that would criminalize gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth and threaten doctors with severe penalties for providing evidence-based treatment. The bill is framed as a measure to “protect children,” but in reality, it weaponizes the criminal legal system against families and providers who are trying to support young people in surviving adolescence.
At the same time, the administration has proposed hospital and insurance policies designed to choke off access to affirming care for trans youth nationwide by making providers fear loss of federal funding, regulatory retaliation, or prosecution. This is a familiar strategy: don’t just ban care outright; instead, make it so risky that hospitals stop providing it altogether. The result is the same everywhere. Young people lose access to care that major medical associations agree can be lifesaving.
All of this is happening under the banner of preventing “irreversible harm.”
But if America were genuinely concerned about irreversible harm to minors, the first thing lawmakers would address is the medically unnecessary, nonconsensual surgeries still performed on intersex infants and young children, procedures that permanently alter healthy tissue, often without urgent medical need, and long before a child can meaningfully participate in the decision. Human rights organizations have documented for years how these interventions are justified not by medical necessity, but by social pressure to make bodies appear more typically “female” or “male.”
Here is the uncomfortable truth: all of the state laws now banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth explicitly include exceptions that allow nonconsensual and harmful intersex surgeries to continue.
A recent JAMA Health Forum analysis found that 28 states have enacted bans on gender-affirming care for minors that carve out intersex exceptions, preserving doctors’ ability to perform irreversible “normalizing” procedures on intersex children even while prohibiting affirming care for trans adolescents.
This contradiction is not accidental. It reveals the real priority behind these laws.
If the goal were truly to protect children from irreversible medical interventions, intersex kids would be protected first. Instead, these policies target one group of children, transgender youth, while continuing to permit permanent interventions on another group whose bodies challenge the same rigid sex and gender binary that lawmakers are trying to enforce.
Intersex people are routinely erased from American policy debates, except when our bodies are invoked to justify harmful laws, warning that intersex children are being used as legal loopholes rather than protected as human beings. This “protect the children” rhetoric is routinely deployed to justify state control over bodies, while preserving medical practices that stripped intersex children like me of autonomy, good health, and choice. Those harms are not theoretical. They are lifelong.
What makes this moment even more jarring is that the federal government had finally begun to recognize intersex people and attempt to address the harms suffered.
In 2024, at the very end of his term, the Biden administration released the first-ever intersex health equity report — a landmark admission that intersex people have been harmed by the U.S. health care system. Issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, the report documents medically unnecessary interventions, lack of informed consent, and systemic erasure and recommends delaying irreversible procedures until individuals can meaningfully participate in decisions about their own bodies.
This should have been a turning point. Instead, America is moving in the opposite direction.
On day one, President Trump issued an executive order defining “sex” in a way attempting to delegitimize the existence of transgender Americans that also erased the existence of many intersex people.
When medicine is used to erase difference, it is called protection, while care that supports self-understanding is treated as a threat. This is not about medicine. It is about control.
You cannot claim to oppose irreversible harm to children while legally permitting surgeries that intersex adults and human rights experts have condemned for decades. You cannot claim to respect bodily autonomy while denying it selectively, based on whose bodies make lawmakers uncomfortable.
Protecting children means protecting all children, transgender, intersex, and cisgender alike. It means delaying irreversible interventions when they are not medically necessary. It means trusting and supporting young people and families over politicians chasing culture-war victories.
America can continue down the path of criminalizing care for some children while sanctioning harm to others, or it can finally listen to the people who have lived the consequences.
Intersex children deserve laws that protect their bodies, not politics that hurt and erase them.
Kimberly Zieselman is a human rights advocate and the author of “XOXY: A Memoir”. The author is a co-author of the JAMA Health Forum article cited, which examined state laws restricting gender-affirming care.
Today, on World AIDS Day, we honor the resilience, courage, and dignity of people living with HIV everywhere especially refugees, asylum seekers, and queer displaced communities across East Africa and the world.
For many, living with HIV is not just a health journey it is a journey of navigating stigma, borders, laws, discrimination, and survival.
Yet even in the face of displacement, uncertainty, and exclusion, queer people living with HIV continue to rise, thrive, advocate, and build community against all odds.
To every displaced person living with HIV:
• Your strength inspires us.
• Your story matters.
• You are worthy of safety, compassion, and the full right to health.
• You deserve a world where borders do not determine access to treatment, where identity does not determine dignity, and where your existence is celebrated not criminalized.
Let today be a reminder that:
• HIV is not a crime.
• Queer identity is not a crime.
• Seeking safety is not a crime.
• Stigma has no place in our communities.
• Access to treatment, care, and protection is a human right.
As we reflect, we must recommit ourselves to building systems that protect not punish displaced queer people living with HIV. We must amplify their voices, invest in inclusive healthcare, and fight the inequalities that fuel vulnerability.
Hope is stronger when we build it together.
Let’s continue to uplift, empower, and walk alongside those whose journeys are too often unheard.
Today we remember.
Today we stand together.
Today we renew hope.
Abraham Junior lives in the Gorom Refugee Settlement in South Sudan.
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