Gay Ukraine soldier marrying woman so she can ‘retrieve his body’ if he dies

Marriage really is a social contract between people and accepted by society as conveying certain benefits and rules.  This is why same sex marriage is so important.    This article shows another way that the laws give a benefit to straight people that is denied to gay people when there is no same sex marriage right.   Now I am glad that Ukraine is ready and wants same sex marriage rights and will do that after the war.   But you know that the anti gay factions will fight it hard.   Right now the way around this issue is to let the people in the military (or even the general public) designate / assign several people that can claim their bodies regardless of relationship.   It is a shame that a fake marriage has to be created to simply make sure that your body gets a proper burial.  The anti-same sex marriage people like to claim that same sex marriage degrades the idea of marriage, but forcing people into a fake marriage simply to have the same rights that straight people do also degrades the ideals of marriage.    Ron and I made our commitment to each other on Oct 12th 1990.  We were sure we were the ones we wanted to spend our entire lives with.   And we have with our love growing stronger every day.   But we were always denied the legal benefits of marriage that even people getting married for a short time got.   In 2014 I was no longer able to work and because my health insurance was through our employer, I no longer had medical coverage.   I couldn’t be covered under Ron’s insurance because the company we both had worked for only allowed married people to be covered under a worker’s medical insurance.   In January 2015 when same sex marriage became legal in Florida we were the first same sex couple in our county to get married.   That allowed me to be on Ron’s insurance.  The marriage did not change our love nor our time together, but it opened up over 1,100 legal benefits to us.   That is why the right to marriage matters.      Hugs

A Ukraine soldier ( Getty Images)

A woman in Ukraine has said she plans to marry her gay soldier friend so someone can “claim him if he dies” while fighting in the war.

In the latest horrifying news from the war in Ukraine, Kyiv resident Leda Kosmachevskaya told the i newspaper that since same-sex marriage is illegal in the country, her friend would not have anybody to “retrieve his body or bury him” if he were to die at war.

The friend, who remained anonymous, has a partner, but due to the law, the army does not recognize his boyfriend as next of kin.

 

“His great fear was that nobody would be able to retrieve his body or bury him,” Kosmachevskaya, 33, told the i.

“He could be buried as an unknown person, or considered missing.”

Kosmachevskaya explained she had known the friend since childhood, but that the call asking her to marry him came completely out of the blue.

She spoke to her own partner, and accepted after hearing her soldier friend had been told he would be deployed to a dangerous area on the front line.

Kosmachevskaya explained that the pair discussed his wishes, including organ donation and burial details, but hopefully, he will return safely from the war and they will get a divorce.

“I would be happy not to get into this arrangement,” she told the newspaper. “But this is the only way to help my friend.”

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed he will ask Ukraine’s government to look into legalising same-sex marriage after the war with Russia ends.

In July, a petition calling for the legalization of marriage equality in Ukraine gained more than 28,000 signatures, passing the 25,000 threshold required for it to be considered by the president.

In August, Zelensky formally responded, noting that the constitution could not be changed during war time or in a state of emergency.

 

According to Reuters, in an official decree, he said: “I asked prime minister [Denys] Shmyhal to address the issue raised in the electronic petition and to inform me of relevant decisions.”

LGBTQ+ rights activists have asked for civil partnerships to be considered in the meantime, as in cases such as Kosmachevskaya’s, the bodies of LGBTQ+ soldiers cannot be collected by partners unless they are married.

She added to the i: “I hope this situation will help to resolve this issue [of same-sex marriage].

“I know there are many other people who are afraid to talk about this and keep silent because of negative comments.”

In a 2019 survey, 69 per cent of Ukrainians asked said “no” to the question: “Should society accept homosexuality?”