RBK-Ukraine

Yatsenyuk’s people were fast to explain that the concept of marriage wouldn’t be expanded

By Гей-альянс Украина On Mar 21, 2016

Panic and despair about “same-sex marriages coming tomorrow” that swept through not only Russian media but Ukrainian as well, including TV and radio, touched even feelings of the Cabinet of Ministers. After the “news” about making LGBT marriages legal appeared, most eager defenders of the morals expectedly accused the government of all the sins in their blogs and comments. So Yatsenyuk’s team was fast to excuse itself and put the explication of National Human Rights Strategy Implementation Action Plan on the government’s website.

“The legislation aimed at the implementation of the Action Plan must provide the regulation of property rights for people living together with no discrimination on any ground,” first deputy of the Minister of Justice Nataliia Sevostianova points out. “The legislation will contain no innovations extending the concept of marriage.” The ideology of the bill on legalization of state registered domestic partnership for heterosexual and same-sex couples that is to be developed in 2017 is the need in legal regulation of property and non-property rights between people living together, the Cabinet of Ministers assures.

It is about possession and inheritance of the property, alimentation of the partner in case of their incapacity for work and constitutional right not to witness against the partner, adds Sevostianova. “This document will have no norms expanding the concept of marriage or legalizing same-sex marriages. All claims to the contrary are no more than political insinuations.” Let’s recall that GAU wrote about the Action Plan as early as late December but the issue was not interesting for mass-media back then.

The government didn’t forget to underline that the implementation of the Strategy is the obligation that Ukraine assumed in course of visa regime liberalization with EU countries. The explanations of the government brought to mind the situation with non-discrimination amendment to the Labour Code – the MPs were persuaded to vote for the sake of visas and Volodymyr Groysman (the Speaker of the Parliament) additionally assured them that there would never be same-sex marriages in Ukraine. However the comments in the Internet and the media headlines show that not many people see difference between marriages and partnerships.

But the government didn’t confine itself to explanations about EU; further on the Ministry of Justice reminds that the National Strategy was developed due to the President’s order. “After its adoption, the Action Plan with specific actions for its implementation was to be worked out in 6 months term,” Sevostisanova says. According to her, more than 250 human rights advocates, public figures and representatives of international organizations were involved in working out the Action Plan on the implementation of the strategy.

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Let’s recall that the document approved by the government on November 23 last year among other things involves working on the bill on legalization of domestic partnerships. It’s planned to be passed to the Cabinet of Ministers in second quarter of 2017, the government didn’t aim to adopt it and the Parliament was silent about the issue as well. We emphasize that we are talking about the partnerships, not the marriages and they are completely different. Partnerships make easier lots of red tape either for same-sex couples or for heterosexual ones and also for same-sex heterosexual couples (they also exist, especially among elder people). Besides the Action Plan envisages giving transgender people a chance to adopt children and making changes in criminal legislation, for example, by adding homophobia as the motive of crime to the Criminal Code.

Автор: Alexandra Zakharova