Ukraine Is An LGBTQ Battlefield
Like it or not, Earth's queer community has a stake in this war.
The world recently marked a full year since Russia invaded Ukraine. A year on, polling shows Americans losing some resolve in their support for our democratic ally, battered on the front line in the war against autocracy. Battered for our sakes.
This column, after all, is being published by an LGBTQ outlet, Metro Weekly. The audience likely identifies as part of the acronym. Or Same-Gender-Loving (SGL). Or queer. Or nonbinary. Or gender nonconforming. Or an ally. Any of these identities makes this your war.
That’s the rule. Let’s get the exceptions out of the way up front. Trump-backing gay billionaire Peter Thiel, for example, infamously wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” If you’re a brainy libertarian billionaire with a fondness for Ayn Rand, why would you? (Aside from a sense of human fellowship, of course.) What is it with white billionaires who spent time growing up in Apartheid South Africa? Elon?
There are plenty of right-wing LGBTQ folks. Roger Stone might be bi. Whatever. These are just outliers.
For the majority of us who wave the LGBTQ-and-more banner, this is our war.
It starts with Russian President Vladimir Putin (aka Pooty). Plenty of politicians have thrown queer people under the metaphoric bus to further their careers. Pooty has wrapped himself in it, like some sacred shawl. He’s essentially branding 21st Century Russia as the superpower place where homophobia and transphobia are warmly embraced and celebrated.
Take his long-winded February 21 speech to Russia’s Federal Assembly. This is how Pooty characterizes the Western boogeyman under his bed: “It is all about the destruction of the family, of cultural and national identity, perversion and abuse of children, including pedophilia, all of which are declared normal in their life. They are forcing the priests to bless same-sex marriages.
“[L]ook at the [H]oly [S]cripture and the main books of other world religions. They say it all, including that family is the union of a man and a woman, but these sacred texts are now being questioned.”
Questioned?! Oh, no!
A sea of blood on his criminal hands, and we’re the problem?
Masha Gessen, the journalist who literally wrote the book (The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin) on this villain, fled Russia for fear the government would take her children. Because her partner is a woman. That alone is what makes her suspect in Pooty’s Russia.
You might want to curl up beneath an isolationist blanket and argue that’s a fight between Masha and Pooty. And so is Russia’s abominable war against Ukraine. You could also turn a blind eye to the LGBTQ Ukrainians fighting for their lives.
You’ll practically need to pop your eyes out of your head, though, to fully ignore what’s happening.
Surely you’ve got Chinese goods in your home. I can’t imagine it’s possible to find an American home absent Chinese products. Chinese war products may soon be lethally falling on the heads of Ukrainians.
If you’re LGBTQ Taiwanese, you’re surely aware of this. China has made no secret about its unceasing desire to reunite with Taiwan. If you’re queer in Taiwan, you likely have deep reservations about such an outcome. Taiwan, after all, is arguably Asia’s most progressive nation — it’s the only Asian nation with marriage equality. Considering how quickly the PROC upended freedoms previously enjoyed in Hong Kong, one can reasonably assume a Chinese-controlled Taiwan would backtrack on marriage, too.
China has reason to join Russia in this spouse-battering bromance. Russia thinks of Ukraine as its own, just as China thinks of Taiwan. And as they beat or threaten these exes yearning to be free, they’d like the rest of us to mind our own business.
One upsetting advantage of being queer is that so many of us have been bullied at some point in our lives. We recognize it immediately, even when it’s somewhat camouflaged by a sheen of diplomacy. Bullies is bullies.
If there’s still any doubt that the war in Ukraine is absolutely a study in what President Joe Biden describes as a global struggle between democracy and autocracy, or that LGBTQ people have an inherent stake in this fight, let’s throw in Iran. Not only does the Iranian regime execute gay people for the crime of “sodomy,” killing pro-freedom protesters is apparently an ayatollah-approved pastime.
While China, at least as of this writing, has yet to supply arms to Russia’s war in Ukraine, Iran has been an eager partner. You’d think Iran wouldn’t want to be too cozy with China, considering the genocide China is committing against its Muslim Uyghur population, but crushing freedom makes for strange bedfellows. Heck, even our own Ambassador John Bolton found he could ally with Iran if it meant keeping queers out of the United Nations.
But don’t you waver. This is your war. This is our war. Losing Ukraine to Pooty would absolutely be a loss for democracy, for freedom, and for whatever stripe of the rainbow family you claim as your own or support as an ally. You’ve seen the war against us at home in America. The Human Rights Campaign is sounding the siren about anti-trans bills in legislatures around the county. Some goober in Tennessee wants to make public drag shows illegal.
The battlefields may be in different corners of the planet, but it’s the same war. Consider yourself drafted.
Will O’Bryan is a former Metro Weekly managing editor, living in D.C. with his husband. He is online at www.LifeInFlights.com.
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