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. Almost every leftist account on Twitter sports a Ukraine flag somewhere in their bio. But now it’s LGBT time.
Ukraine has been such a great moral hill to stand on for the left. 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. They wear unicorn patches and are being accepted by their fellow soldiers who, according to the stories, are even using their pronouns!
If you hear sirens outside your home or office, that’s “current thing” leftists OD’ing on “care.”
According to NBC, LGBT soldiers have taken sewing unicorn patches into their uniforms to distinguish themselves as LGBT individuals. 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.”
This all seems incredibly convenient in terms of narrative, at least for the left attempting to merge Ukraine and LGBT causes. It seems slightly unbelievable that all of this good stuff is happening for LGBT soldiers with no dissent or drawbacks. This reads more like the latter half of a Disney movie. You can practically hear the swell of joyous music in the background as the commander, standing on a truck, tells his troops the very important message that homophobia is bad as all they all look up at him, inspired.
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.