OCU Opposes Istanbul Convention

The Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) opposes the ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (better known as the Istanbul Convention).

This is stated in a message on the website of the OCU, Ukrainian News Agency reports.

"The position of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (as well as the position of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) earlier, towards unification) remains unchanged - our Church, together with all other Churches and religious organizations united in the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (AUCCRO), opposes attempts, under the guise of combating domestic violence, to introduce to the Ukrainian legislation ideological and medical concepts "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" as legal terms in order to replace the biological sex (woman and man) in the legislation with gender - a complex of social, psychological and sexual ideas. Thus, contrary to the Constitution of Ukraine, it is proposed to fix the norms of one modern ideologies as mandatory legislative prescriptions, although no ideology, including gender, can be recognized by the state as mandatory," the statement says.

At the same time, the document ratified by the Verkhovna Rada states that Ukraine does not consider any of the provisions of the Istanbul Convention as obliging it to change the Constitution of Ukraine and the Family Code of Ukraine, other laws of Ukraine on the institutions of marriage, family and adoption, as well as interfering the right of parents to educate their children accordingly to their own beliefs.

Also, according to the document, Ukraine declares that it will apply the Convention in accordance with the values, principles and norms defined by the Constitution of Ukraine.

At the same time, according to representatives of the OCU, many countries of the European Union, where "the so-called "same-sex marriages" are legalized, where criminal prosecution is introduced for criticizing gender ideology and the sins promoted by it, for political and ideological reasons, are interested in promoting the Istanbul Convention, encouraging other countries to ratify it.”

The OCU states that the politicization of the topic of same-sex relationships and the legal prosecution of critics of "this sin by the OCU is condemned in the same way as the politicization of religion."

"Calling stereotypes of gender ideology 'European values'" is as much a substitution of concepts as trying to define that only liberal or conservative, only right or left, or centrist political views are "European", and everyone else is willing to be stonewalled," considers the OCU.

The corresponding statement of the OCU was published on its website before the ratification of the convention by the Parliament.

As Ukrainian News Agency reported, on Monday, the Verkhovna Rada ratified the Istanbul Convention.