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Moldova: peaceful Pride march amid calls for marriage equality [1]
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Date: 2023-06
Test case for marriage equality
Marriage equality was one of the themes of this year's Moldova Pride, because the country currently does not recognise same-sex unions. “We do not expect that marriage equality will be available in Moldova next year,” said GDM’s Danilova. “That’s why we decided to start at this scale, and to keep repeating this topic.”
A test case is currently underway, thanks to the actions of Leo Zbancă and his partner Angelica Frolov. When they requested a marriage application in March, the process went smoothly – until the queer couple handed over their passports.
“They looked at the passports and saw [the gender markers were] the same sex. The reaction was really funny,” Zbancă, a transmasculine nonbinary person and coordinator of a support group for transgender and gender-nonconforming people at GDM, told openDemocracy. “They were shocked, they said, ‘why don’t you go to Europe?’”
“We said – ‘Because we want this right now in our country. We don’t want to go to Europe,’” recalled Zbancă, who uses he/they pronouns.
Zbancă and Frolov, the first out-lesbian to host a TV show in Moldova and also GDM’s advocacy programme coordinator, expected a refusal. In fact, they wanted one so that they could sue the Public Services Agency (ASP) in charge of registering marriages – which they are doing now, having filed a lawsuit in April.
“We went first because we are in a privileged position, and wanted to make it public,” said Zbancă.
Their push comes after the landmark ruling in January by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) that member countries of the Council of Europe, which includes Moldova, must legally recognise and protect families formed by people of the same sex. If Moldova refuses to recognise Zbancă and Frolov’s union in court, they are prepared to take their case to the ECtHR.
Russian invasion of Ukraine
Moldova is sandwiched between Romania to the west and Ukraine to the east, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine has inevitably added a layer of anxiety to life in the country. It has affected the LGBTIQ community in Moldova, Ukraine and Russia, said Danilova.
Moldovan president Maia Sandu, the country’s first woman and first pro-European leader, said in May that the European Union should grant Moldova membership “as soon as possible”. The EU granted both Moldova and Ukraine candidacy status in June 2022.
Same-sex marriage is not yet legal in Ukraine. If an LGBTIQ soldier dies fighting Russia’s invasion, their partner fears they will not be notified of their death or even invited to the funeral because “legally, they are nobody to each other,” Danilova said.
“We have the example of Ukraine, which is very close to us, where LGBT people are fighting for the independence of their country,” Danilova explained. “Sometimes they even give their lives. And their partners are not even able to take their bodies, which is so unfair.”
Moldovan-Ukrainian lesbian couple Albina Ciuprin and Anhelina Kylyk were the third same-sex couple out of a total of five to have so far applied to get married in Moldova. All have been refused.
“Five couples applying for marriage is a huge step,” said Kylyk, who is originally from Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine and works at a shelter for Ukrainian refugees. “We are doing it for the LGBTIQ community and the next generation.”
Before the Russian invasion, Kylyk and Ciuprin were travelling the world, posting videos about their travels and relationship to their 9,000 followers on TikTok. But they want to get married in Moldova, not anywhere else. “I don't want to run away and do it in Spain, or the Netherlands,” Ciuprin said. “I want to be here. I want my and her parents to be here.”
Kylyk and Ciuprin have also made what they call “vows to the government”, informal promises to “have a house in the village so that Moldovan villages don’t die” and to try for a pregnancy via IVF. Ciuprin said with a chuckle: “The government would benefit from us getting married.”
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/moldova-pride-lgbtiq-marriage-equality-ukraine/
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