{"id":186215,"date":"2014-04-01T18:57:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T23:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/04\/01\/nope-no-fascists-here\/"},"modified":"2014-04-01T18:57:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-01T23:57:00","slug":"nope-no-fascists-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/04\/01\/nope-no-fascists-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Nope, no Fascists Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ukrainian parliament is rushing to pass anti-gay legislation<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Kiev is getting back to normal. Downtown streets that just one month ago looked like battlefields are now full of busy crowds and tourists. In one of the newly revitalized city squares, I met Olena Shevchenko, an LGBT-activist-turned-revolutionary. I had heard a lot of about her\u2014an openly gay woman who managed to form a female-only military unit. Some call them the \u201cMaidan Amazons.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>Olena joined the revolution in its very first days, but the idea to form a women-only \u201csotnya\u201d (a Cossack term for a group of one hundred fighters) came a bit later, as a response to rising sexism within Maidan (Independence) Square. The women in Maidan Square were being asked to make sandwiches; meanwhile, they had been building the barricades.<\/span>

<\/span>At the start, Olena had only eight women in her military unit (mostly human rights activists from feminist or LGBT groups). But thanks to social media, the number rose to 500 people in Independence Square and more than 1,500 at other locations. (For comparison, the right-wing Right Sector, had around 2,500 fighters in downtown Kiev on a regular basis.) \u201cIt was amazing, because \u2018feminism\u2019 is still a dirty word in Ukraine,\u201d she says, \u201cthe same as \u2018gay.\u2019\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>First, many open homophobes are still among the country\u2019s top-officials. Interim President Oleksandr Turchynov (also a Baptist preacher) famously said, back in 2007, \u201cIf a man has normal views, then you label him a conservative, but those who use drugs or promote sodomy\u2014you label them a progressive person. All of these are perversions.\u201d Several leaders from the far-right Ukrainian nationalist party, Svoboda, have been given ministerial posts in the post-revolution government, including the vice-prime minister position. In fairness, Svoboda has toned down its anti-gay rhetoric in recent months. One of the party\u2019s MPs, Yuriy Syrotyuk, called the first gay pride parade in Kiev \u201can act of aggression\u201d against Ukraine in 2012, but now presents a more moderate, if still limited, position. \u201cWe respect rights of all minorities, but LGBT legalization will blow up this country,\u201d he stated in an interview. \u201cIf we take this discussion to the parliament, not only Crimea will secede, but Ukrainian provinces will also start to leave the country.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>The new government is also actively trying to block an anti-discrimination law that would protect LGBT people in workplaces. This piece of legislation, pushed as part of integration talks with EU is, frankly, the only progressive thing to happen for the local gay community since 1991, when Ukraine became the first post-Soviet country to decriminalize homosexuality. (Some opponents of the law argue that support for it would give Russia a cart-blanche; in the past, the Kremlin has showed amazing capabilities to organize quickly and effectively against any kind of gay movement inside Ukraine.) Now, a law similar to the Russian\u2019s “gay propaganda” law\u2014which criminalizes even discussion of gay rights\u2014is pending in the Ukrainian parliament<\/span><\/b>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n

These are the folks that our foreign policy and intelligence allied with to drive out Yanukovych.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ukrainian parliament is rushing to pass anti-gay legislation: Kiev is getting back to normal. Downtown streets that just one month ago looked like battlefields are now full of busy crowds and tourists. In one of the newly revitalized city squares, I met Olena Shevchenko, an LGBT-activist-turned-revolutionary. I had heard a lot of about her\u2014an …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[967,964,1030],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bigotry","category-foreign-relations","category-lgbtq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}