The Ukrainian LGBT Soldier Story Has Mainstream Propaganda Stink All Over It – Opinion

Every year on June 1, corporations slap their logos with rainbow-colored “Pride” colors so that they can be seen as being a corporation that cares about the LGBT community. These logos often disappear the moment pride month is over, and if you look closely, you can see that corporations with social media accounts in countries that don’t look kindly on homosexuality often leave those bereft of any LGBT pride.

(READ: It’s Time for Brands to Show Their LGBT “Pride” (Except In Countries Where It’s Not Acceptable)

But the “current thing” in our culture is still the war in Ukraine. Nearly all leftist accounts on Twitter feature a Ukraine flag at the bottom of their bio. But now it’s LGBT time.

The left has had such an incredible moral hill in Ukraine. They “care” about the people of Ukraine and the left would rather that energy not dissipate…but then again pride month does the same…so what is the left to do?

Why not rely on good ol’ intersectionality? Merge the two so that it becomes one huge glob of irresistible “care” bait.

Thus you see a story come out just in time for pride month about Ukraine’s LGBT soldiers joining the ranks to fight back against Russia. Their fellow soldiers are accepting them, and they even use their pronouns, as shown in the story.

If you hear sirens outside your home or office, that’s “current thing” leftists OD’ing on “care.”

According to NBC, LGBT soldiers sew unicorn patches to their uniforms in order to identify themselves as LGBT. It’s something that they started doing when during the Crimea war, Russia said there were now gay people in the army:

As volunteer fighters Oleksandr Zhuhan and Antonina Romanova pack for a return to active duty, they contemplate the unicorn insignia that gives their uniform a rare distinction — a symbol of their status as an LGBTQ couple who are Ukrainian soldiers.

Members of Ukraine’s LGBTQ community who sign up for the war have taken to sewing the image of the mythical beast into their standard-issue epaulettes just below the national flag.

The practice harks back to the 2014 conflict when Russia invaded then annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, “when lots of people said there are no gay people in the army,” actor, director and drama teacher Zhuhan told Reuters as he and Romanova dressed in their apartment for their second three-month combat rotation.

“So they (the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community) chose the unicorn because it is like a fantastic ‘nonexistent’ creature.”

One of the people, Zhuhan, said that they’re fighting to stop Russia and its quest to “destroy our culture.”

Already, I’m having trouble believing some of this. While I have no doubt that there are LGBT people in Ukraine and many of them are fighting in the war, the “culture” that they’re defending is one that doesn’t accept LGBT people. Ukraine has anti-gay laws in their country and they don’t respect the pronoun game often played here in the west. In fact, men of fighting age are required to sign up and the Ukrainian government doesn’t make exceptions for people who identify as a different sex. If you’re a man, you’re a man.

Romanova said that fellow soldiers began calling him Antonina and using his “she” pronoun. Moreover, there was a lot of “back-slapping” when they joined their new unit in Kyiv. They were worried that their commander would be homophobic but apparently, he made it clear that homophobia won’t be tolerated.

Now the biggest fear of the two characters in NBC’s story is that if they die, it’ll be a Christian burial:

“The thing I’m worried about is that in case I get killed during this war, they won’t allow Antonina to bury me the way I want to be buried,” Zhuhan said.

“They’d rather let my mum bury me with the priest reading silly prayers … But I am an atheist and I don’t want that.”

All of this seems very convenient narrative-wise, at least to the left trying to combine Ukraine and LGBT causes. All of this goodness is available for LGBT soldiers, without dissent or drawbacks. It reads more like the second half of a Disney film. The commander is standing in front of his troops and delivering the important message that homophobia can be bad.

It’s a picture they want to paint for you just in time for the next current thing. When the question about Ukraine’s resistance to the LGBT community is eventually brought up during pride month, leftists can point to this story…a story that seems too good to be true.

This story has all the signs of being half-told in order to push a narrative, and what’s more, reminds one too much of being the equivalent of the left slapping an LGBT logo on their brand.