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FEATURE-Loved and loathed: Raising a gay child in the former Soviet Union
KIEV, Oct 17 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – It was the poems that gave it away. Heartfelt writings about a man’s love for a man and a woman’s love for a woman found on the family computer sent Olena Globa into a seething rage when she confronted her then-teenaged son about his sexuality.
“I sat down on the sofa next to him. I remember I was looking straight at the door, and I – very sharply, very angrily – asked him, ‘Are you a faggot?’” said Globa, sitting in her apartment in the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital Kiev.
It took eight years for Globa to accept her son’s sexuality, and the battle to overcome her prejudices set her on a new path: helping other Ukrainian families accept their gay children, too.
Homosexuality has been legal in Ukraine since 1991 with the authorities increasing their support for gay rights since a pro-Western government took power in 2014, and in 2015 passed a law banning workplace discrimination against the LGBT+ community.
But human rights group say many people in the former Soviet Union still find it hard to accept anyone being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT+) and homophobia is widespread.
Globa also began campaigning for LGBT+ rights – and not just because she thought it was the right thing to do.
A gay activist, Bogdan fled to the United States in 2016, fearing for his life. If her son is ever to come home, his mother knows his rights and safety must first be secured.
TOLERANCE
LGBT+ people are often harassed by strangers and by their own relatives, and face stigma, discrimination and sometimes violent attacks, charities say. The country scored 21 out of 100 points in a 2018 analysis by EU-funded Rainbow Europe ranking LGBT+ people’s rights in Europe, coming 36 out of 49 nations.
“We can talk freely and openly here about almost anything, except this group of people,” said ent Programme office in Ukraine, which advocates for LGBT+ rights. read more