When I was a sophomore at Baylor University (soon after the cooling of the earth’s crust) the great journalism professor David McHam had an interesting pre-computer way of demonstrating what he wanted to see when a student prepared a second draft of a news story.
Taking a metal straight edge (think pica pole), he would tear the copy into horizontal blocks of text. Then he would rearrange these into a different order, locking them in place with clear tape. Then he would say something like this: “You buried some of the most important information. Go rewrite the story in this order.”
This brings me to a New York Times story about religion, culture, politics and war in Ukraine. There’s a lot of interesting material here, but readers who want to know some crucial basic facts will need to be patient — because they are buried deep in this report. The double-decker headline offers the basic framework:
War Spurs Ukrainian Efforts to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage
The role of gay soldiers, the lack of legal rights for their partners, and the threat of Russia imposing anti-L.G.B.T. policies have turned the war into a catalyst for change in Ukraine.
Now, before I go any further, let me note that, yes, I am Orthodox and I attend a parish that includes Slavic believers, as well as lots and lots of American converts. Also, my two visits to Kiev left me convinced Ukraine is — as the Soviets intended — a tragically divided nation. My views are identical to those of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, on that subject.
When Russian began its evil invasion, I posted a note on Facebook that ended with this:
EU-USA was arrogant enough to think they could — with money, culture and military tech — turn Eastern-Russian Ukrainians into Europeans. Will Putin be arrogant enough to think he can, with blood, turn Western-European Ukrainians into Russians?
I raise this issue because, at a crucial point deep in this Times story, I believe it is relevant. Hold that though.
The anecdotal lede for this story focuses on the fears of a young Ukrainian combat medic named Olexander Shadskykh. That leads to the thesis statement:
Gay rights advocates said Mr. Shadskykh is one of hundreds — possibly thousands — of L.G.B.T. military recruits, facing a lack of legal rights for them and their partners that suddenly poses a palpable challenge in wartime. In Ukraine, they do not have the automatic right to visit a hospitalized partner, to share property ownership, to care for a deceased partner’s children, to claim the body of a partner killed in war or to collect death benefits from the state.
But the war is adding impetus to a drive to legalize gay marriage, with a petition recently reaching the desk of President Volodymyr Zelensky calling for same-sex partners to have the same rights as heterosexual couples, including the right to marry.
“At this time, every day can be the last,” says the petition, which has garnered nearly 30,000 signatures, enough to trigger a review by the president.
The story — high up — offers a barrage of material from perfectly valid sources illustrating that the more Western elements of Ukrainian society believe that the issue of LGBTQ rights is near the top of reasons for Ukraine to enter the European Union and join the modernizing West. There are key facts here noting that this has been a crucial goal for American politicos and activists.
But there is political hurdle will be high, notes the Times team:
Mr. Zelensky can decline to act on the petition, or endorse it by drafting a gay rights bill and sending it for a vote in Parliament, where his governing Servant of the People Party has a sizable majority. He could also simply pass the issue on to Parliament for debate. Mr. Zelensky’s office did not respond to several requests for comment.
Any attempt to change the law faces a high barrier in Ukraine’s Constitution, which states that “marriage is based on the free consent of a woman and a man.” Amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote by Parliament.
Why didn’t Zelensky jump at a chance to back this hot-button cause that is so important to the Times and other powerful interests in the USA-EU world?
For starters, there is religion. Even the new USA-EU and Istanbul backed Ukrainian Orthodox jurisdiction would hesitate to back this cause.
… The drive for same-sex marriage faces significant resistance in a country where the Eastern Orthodox church and traditional mores are deeply embedded in the social fabric. Opponents include some conservative members of Mr. Zelensky’s own party, who have called for a law fining “homosexual propaganda.”
This brings us to a complex block of information that, I would argue, needed to be higher in this report — that is, if the goal was for Times readers to understand the views of Ukrainians other than those who are anxious to line up and be interviewed by Western media.
Read this carefully:
Social attitudes have been changing in Ukraine, where homosexuality was decriminalized in 1991, but the extent of that change is unclear. Thousands danced on floats at last year’s Pride Parade in Kyiv. The gay rights movement was energized by the 2014 Maidan revolution, which ousted Ukraine’s pro-Moscow president and helped deepen ties between gay activists and other branches of civil society.
A telephone poll in May of 2,000 respondents by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed that, over the past six years, the number of Ukrainians with a “negative view” of the L.G.B.T. community had decreased to 38 percent from about 60 percent. But a Pew Research Center survey in 2019 found that 69 percent of Ukrainians said society should not accept homosexuality.
Georgiy Mazurashu, a member of Parliament from Mr. Zelensky’s party who proposed the law against homosexual propaganda, said a majority of Ukrainians opposed same-sex marriage. He argued that gay rights legislation would send an “alarming signal for society and our traditional values.” Alluding to the war, he added, “We have a lot of other, incomparably more urgent and serious problems.”
Note the timing of that Pew research. Anyone want to bet that, if the results were charted on a map, the positive v. negative opinions on this issue would look something like this map of the results in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential race?
It’s also possible that, in both polls, researchers would find familiar divides — not just between Ukrainians who speak Russian and those whose primary language is Ukrainian — between rural and urban Ukrainians, as well as secular Ukrainians and those active in Orthodox and Eastern-Rite Catholic parishes.
In conclusion: Is this a valid story?
Of course it is. For starters, it’s clear that LGBTQ issues are at the heart of USA-EU interests in Ukraine — by which I mean the Joe Biden administration, powerful NGOs and major Western corporations, especially in Big Tech.
Also, the cultural divides in Ukrainian culture are real, a fact that Putin has attempted to manipulate to support the logic of his invasion.
Finally, this is a perfect example of the East vs. West divide that, as Solzhenitsyn warned, was built into the Soviet-era structure of Ukraine.
But let’s end with a basic question about this key line in the story: “Mr. Zelensky’s office did not respond to several requests for comment.”
Maybe readers needed to know more, near the top of this story, about why Ukraine’s besieged president didn’t return those calls.
FIRST IMAGE: Uncredited photo with an Atlantic Council website feature entitled “Ukraine offers hope in an increasingly homophobic neighborhood.”