Boni Mores

On Ukraine's new Civil Code, and why it's no good

There’s a bit of sociological research I like to quote that has to do with the public perception of LGBTQ+ people in Ukraine. In the pre-pandemic times, only about 28% of respondents in a nationwide representative sample indicated that they agree or strongly agree that ‘homosexual people’ should have the same rights as others (NDI Ukraine, biannual survey, 2019).

Back then, the sociologists had to use the term ‘homosexual people’ because ‘LGBTQ+ people’ would be too obscure, too unknown, to the general public. LGBTQ+ organizations were still a niche subset of Ukraine’s civil society, but the momentum has begun, and numerous public awareness campaigns, Pride events, and educational projects were launched to dispel the myth that us queers are somehow ‘different’ than others or weird or eccentric, an aberration. On the contrary, we the queers hold serious professional commitments, or serve in Ukraine’s Defense Forces, suffer from the consequences of regular russian air attacks against cities in the rear, just the same as others.

So why shouldn’t we have the same rights as others?

Fast forward to wartime Ukraine: sociological research shows that up to 70% of respondents in a nationwide representative sample agree or strongly agree that LGBT people should have the same rights as others.

Quite a significant change compared to pre–full-scale-war indicators, no?

You’d think that this figure of support would give enough basis for LGBTQ+ people to finally obtain the rights most relevant during war. I’m talking about the right to visit your partner in the hospital, or the right to access their body and arrange a proper burial if they are killed, but also the rights to shared property and inheritance, and the legal recognition of same sex couples as partners and family members. If not the right to marry, then give us the right to civil partnerships. It costs nothing to the state.

Yet, my dear state of Ukraine, the one I contribute my taxes and time and energy to, has taken a step to formally erase same-sex couples from the law, closing all existing legal loopholes that LGBTQ+ people could use to claim family status.

Yesterday, the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) of Ukraine passed in the first reading the new civil code, draft law #15150. It is the third iteration of a draft that has been rejected, criticized, and sent back with corrections twice already, each time by human rights organizations, civil society, and the Ukrainian government’s own Ministry of Justice. The third time, apparently, is the charm.

Why Ukraine’s new civil code is bad for LGBTQ+ people

Under this new civil code, LGBTQ+ people are completely and actively excluded from the law. The “factual family union” is defined exclusively as cohabitation of two persons of opposite sex — meaning same-sex couples cannot be recognized as family even in fact, and even via court.

Marriage is defined exclusively as a union of a man and a woman, so same-sex marriages contracted abroad are not recognized in Ukraine; there are no alternative forms of family-union recognition (such as civil partnerships) for LGBTQ+ people, contrary to direct EU recommendations and Ukraine’s obligations to implement the European Court on Human Rights rulings. Even a marriage validly contracted and recognized abroad has no force in Ukraine if the partners are of the same sex.

This law is hostile to transgender people. In case of a change of gender marker, the marriage is declared invalid, and this can be initiated not only by the partners themselves, but by third parties, and even after the death of one of the partners. This opens the door to third-party challenges that erase trans people’s marriages posthumously.

The law explicitly prohibits people of the same sex from jointly adopting a child. Even if a couple is already raising one partner’s child, the second partner gets no parental rights or obligations. This does not take into account already-existing families with children among LGBTIQ+ communities and contradicts the best interests of the child.

Why Ukraine’s new civil code is bad for women

The law introduces ‘boni mores’ (yes, “good morals”, whatever that means) as a basis for state intrusion into private life. Good morals, or public morals, is “the totality of moral norms and principles, standards of ethical conduct, and generally accepted notions of proper behavior established in society. Where social relations contravene good morals, the legal consequences provided for by this Code and/or another law, or by contract, shall apply.” This means that if a judge decides that divorce for a couple is “immoral,” people will be subjected to mandatory reconciliation attempts, extending court proceedings, increasing legal costs, and forcing people - typically women - into potentially abusive intimacy.

If a couple has small children, the court is obligated to set a reconciliation period before granting divorce. Even if a woman wants to divorce quickly — for example, due to domestic violence or a toxic relationship, the process is automatically delayed. This is a direct safety risk for survivors.

Why the new civil code opens avenues for corruption (and likely the main reason why it was passed so quickly)

The new civil code has potentially massive corruption implications. The book on Publicity of Civil Rights changes the very concept of acquiring and protecting property, moving from protection of the actual owner to priority of the registry record. The draft proposes an approach in which “a heritage site effectively does not exist if there is no information about it in the registry.” Many heritage sites thus become legally vulnerable to private appropriation.

Moreover, if illegal registration of a forest or nature reserve as private property is not detected within three years, the right to its return is lost forever. In the civil code, there’s a term “bona fide acquirer”: if a community’s or state’s right to property (forests, coastlines, cultural heritage) was not entered into the registry in time, it cannot be defended against a third party who acquired it relying on registry data. This creates a textbook scheme: extract an unregistered object via a “black registrar,” then quickly resell to a “bona fide buyer”, and the original owner (state or community) has no recourse. This is especially dangerous in wartime, when registry access has been restricted, occupied territories have parallel records, and state institutions have limited monitoring capacity.

What next

I don’t like this. I don’t want Ukraine to follow the path that, say, Sakartvelo took when there was a legislative turn writing LGBTQ+ people out and suppressing civil society, and coming dangerously close to russia in terms of unaccountable state power.

I think about the phrase boni mores and what it means for a community to decide what its good morals are. The war we’re in is, among other things, a war for values, perhaps such as democracy, the rule of law, European integration, the right to be who you are, be free and be brave like Ukraine.

I think about Ukrainian soldiers who are gay, who are trans, who are queer, who are fighting and dying in a country whose parliament just voted to narrow the legal definition of family specifically to exclude people like them.

I know that the members of this parliament don’t necessarily represent the entire country, the 70% of folks saying they support equal rights.

I’m just a bit tired and frustrated. Not this shit, again.

But I’m not done.

I believe in Ukraine’s future as a prosperous country where its citizens and residents can find a place to call home and build a life for themselves. I am here for that future, goddamnit. But I also have one life, and I want that future now, because Ukraine is not russia, and because a foot in the door of civil rights backsliding always means that more’s in store.

In May, protests are planned around Ukraine to oppose the adoption of this new civil code in a second reading. Join, if you’re here. Spread the word, support the movement, help stop draft law #15150.

For good morals’ sake.

Thanks for being here! This is a reader-supported wartime journal. Patreon is what lets me keep writing these notes, so if you want to support my hustle and my life here in Kyiv - you can do so by signing up for a paid subscription here. (Substack’s own paid subscription service does not work within Ukraine, hence Patreon).

Get access to exclusive cat content. Yes, I repeat: exclusive Ukrainian cat content for my paid subscribers.