So why was I nervous of going to the Kyiv Equality March on June 12 – another peaceful rally, where LGBT people just wanted to show that they should be treated equally to everyone else?
Well, I had a pretty good reason.
Since my parents are currently abroad on vacation, and my husband is on a business trip, my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter was waiting for me at home with only her babysitter. So, I thought, what if some ultra-nationalist activists, who had promised to turn the rally in support of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Ukraine, into a “bloody mess” fulfilled their threat?
What if some of them, as they did during the last year’s Equality March in Kyiv, threw smoke grenades and fire crackers at the participants, and someone – maybe me – was injured? Instead of coming back home to put my daughter to bed, I myself could be in hospital, and there would be no one to take care of her.
How can it be that a citizen of a European country in the 21st century is in real danger when walking down the central streets of a capital city in the middle of the day?
To make sure the LGBT rally was safe, Kyiv’s authorities deployed 6,000 police officers to guard the participants. And it worked, obviously.
But of course, Artem Skoropadskyi, the spokesman of the ultra-nationalist Right Sector organization, who made the “bloody mess” threats several weeks prior to the march, never publicly renounced them. So the rally went ahead safely only thanks to the police effort.
And by the way, many of the rally participants told me they were attending Kyiv Pride precisely because of the threats made against the event.
One of them was Yuriy Serdiuk, Ukrainian soldier who fought against Kremlin-backed fighters in the war-torn Donbas. He told me that at war he was defending each and every Ukrainian, as “all of them deserve equal protection.”
“And internal conflicts are unacceptable,” he said.
Along with the LGBT people at the march, I saw heterosexual students and entrepreneurs, mothers with small children, disabled people, the elderly, foreign diplomats and Ukrainian lawmakers. They were not there for publicity. They held flags and marched in the front lines, chanting “It’s always the right time for human rights,” together with the LGBT participants.
Everyone was friendly and smiling; people were blowing soap bubbles and playing drums. They hugged and laughed.
As the participants made their short two-block march, their opponents watched the rally from the roadside, booed, showed their middle fingers, and shouted obscenities. The anti-gay protesters cited the Old Testament, and some said that if “today we’re protecting homosexuals, tomorrow it will be alcoholics and pedophiles." They yelled, and handed out fliers condemning “gay propaganda,” leaving the street littered with paper.
The thing is, I’m sure that none of those “I-don’t- want-my- kids-to- see-you- and-become- like-you” LGBT haters knew who of the 1,500 participants was gay, and who was straight. Their main fear, based on what I heard at the march, was that their children would somehow see what goes on behind the bedroom doors of same-sex couples. But guess what: Neither do I want my daughter to know what goes on behind theirs.
What do I want is for everyone to be treated equally, and for my daughter never, ever to be afraid of marching through the center of Kyiv in the middle of the day.
Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected]
