An advertisement in the Kyiv metro featuring a same-sex couple has sparked claims that the city’s underground railway is promoting homosexuality.
The banner ad encourages people to take HIV tests. It features two couples – one is heterosexual and the other homosexual.
Kyiv Metropolitan, the company that operates Kyiv underground, sent a letter on Feb. 6 to advertising company Komanda A to inform them that it received complaints from customers about the ad, which has been displayed on the walls of escalator tunnels in stations for some months now.
The deputy head of the municipal enterprise, Dmytro Peklun, sent the letter to the company. The letter contains a request that the company be more careful with the content of its ads.
But following the letter’s recent publication on March 5, there was an online backlash from members of the public, who in turn accused the management of Kyiv Metropolitan of being homophobic.
The Kyiv metro denies that, saying it was merely passing on complaints from the public to the advertising company that created the ad.
“We didn’t call it homosexual propaganda,” Kyiv Metropolitan spokeswoman Natalka Makogon told the Kyiv Post.
“This was the opinion of our customers, and we were obliged to provide Komanda A with information about these complaints,” she said.
“We’re Kyiv Metropolitan: We’re not engaged in advertising itself.”
A representative of Komanda A told the Kyiv Post that the company was aware of the complaints from the public about the content of the ad, but said that the company had done nothing illegal.
Unlike in other former Soviet countries like Russia, there is no law against promoting homosexuality in Ukraine, although some conservative lawmakers have pushed for such legislation, and Ukrainian society in general is not supportive of increased rights for LGBT people.
Komanda A also denied the ad promoted homosexuality, emphasizing that it was designed to encourage people to get tested for HIV. According to the United Nations’ program on HIV/AIDS, Ukraine has one of the highest HIV infection rates in Europe.
Ukraine’s LGBT community has also come to the ad company’s defense. LGBT rights activist Tymur Levchuk, said the ad addresses a serious social issue.
“People who (make such complaints) are speaking out against human rights,” Levchuk told the Kyiv Post.
“This banner ad about HIV testing is a social ad about an urgent problem in Ukraine.”
