The Marriage Equality Battle in Wartime

Earlier this year, the chairman of Ukraine’s legislature, Ruslan Stefanchuk, introduced an overhaul of Ukraine’s civil code that included a provision to strip the courts of the power to recognize the rights of same-sex couples. It would also define “de facto family unions” as strictly between opposite-sex couples, and automatically annul marriages if a partner undergoes gender reassignment. 

This is a backlash to significant progress made for LGBTQ+ rights since Russia launched the full-scale invasion four years ago, including passage of legislation to counter anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech and a recent Supreme Court ruling recognizing a gay male couple as a family. Public opinion polls show support for queer rights surged in the war’s early months, and a 2022 petition in support of partnership rights quickly gained the 25,000 signatures that require a formal response from the president under Ukrainian law. 

Zelensky punted the issue to parliament, and an MP named Inna Sovsun introduced partnership legislation in early 2023. But it has yet to receive a vote.

I’ve been working with the international organization All Out and a coalition of Ukrainian organizations to use stories like Leda’s in The Queer Face of War to support the continuing campaign for partnership rights. Queer organizations have mobilized to defeat Stefanchuk’s anti-LGBTQ legislation, as have feminist groups, children’s rights organizations, and others who object to other changes to the civil code. 

That’s one reason I’m so excited to bring an exhibition of The Queer Face of War to Kyiv for Pride Month. It’ll be on display at the Ukrainka Gallery in central Kyiv in a show organized in partnership with the queer feminist group Insight and LGBTQI+ Military and Veterans for Equal Rights. It’s an opportunity to reflect on the contributions queer people have made to Ukraine's independence and the interconnection between LGBTQ+ rights and Ukraine’s broader struggle for democracy.

But I need your help to get there. I’m a quarter of the way to my $5,000 goal to cover a portion of costs of European exhibitions this summer, which also include part of the official “offstage” events at Eurovision in Vienna and World Pride in Amsterdam. Thanks to everyone who’s contributed, and please donate here if you can help me reach the goal!

One of the stories I’ll share there is that of Leda Kosmachevska.

This is one of the only portraits in The Queer Face of War that I didn’t photograph. Leda made this self portrait in the summer of 2022, as support for partnership rights for queer soldiers was surging. 

She made it after getting a call out of the blue from a childhood friend named Mykhailo. They hadn’t spoken in a long time, but he’d called asking her to marry him. Leda had a long-term boyfriend—and so did Mykhailo. But Mykhailo was being deployed to the front and worried his body would go unclaimed if he were killed. Ukrainian law wouldn't let him marry his partner, and he had no other living family. Marrying Leda was his solution.

Mykhailo reached Leda as she was visiting her boyfriend, who was in basic training and was also about to be deployed to the front. She discussed Mykhailo’s request with him at her hotel that evening, and he agreed. She called Mykhailo the next day to tell him yes. Then she went to take a shower and swaddled herself in a white blanket. It looked like a wedding gown. I'm a bride, she thought. She propped up her cell phone inside a boot and snapped this photo, which went viral when she posted it to Facebook.

I made a portrait of Leda about a year later. She asked me to photograph her with her boyfriend’s favorite hat. He’d been killed in action two weeks earlier. His body still lay unclaimed on the battlefield, his commander told her, because his comrades could not safely reach him.