UKRAINIAN COUNCIL OF CHURCHES EXPLAINS WHY INSTANBUL CONVENTION SHOULD NOT BE RATIFIED
The risks of ratification of the Istanbul Convention should lead Ukrainian authorities to develop national legislation for combating domestic violence in order to protect society from gender ideology.
The All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations [ACCRO] in appeals to the leadership of the government and a number of ministries recalled that the majority of people of Ukraine do not support the ratification of the Council of Europe's Convention on Prevention of Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (the Istanbul Convention) and the struggle with these phenomena. The reason for this is the imposition on this document of a gender ideology that does not pertain to protection from domestic violence but rather substantially harms the moral principles and family values of Ukrainian society.
In December 2019, a petition on the website of the president of Ukraine (No. 22/074484-ep) against ratification of the Istanbul Convention gathered the necessary 25,000 votes, but the public did not see a noticeable response on the part of the president of Ukraine and the government. However, a petition that was the opposite in content in May 2020 prompted members of the government toward activity directed toward promotion of the idea of ratification of the Istanbul Convention in Ukraine.
The ACCRO is convinced that the absence of a consensus in Ukrainian society regarding gender ideology, when the concept of "sex" is replaced by the concept of "gender" with its more than fifty diverse definitions as of today, stands in the way of ratification of the Istanbul Convention.
Such a distorted approach, which contradicts the natural order of sex identification, may make the Istanbul Convention a political and legal instrument for popularizing in Ukrainian schools and universities new "genders" and same-sex relations. This concern is explained by the fact that the convention explicitly stipulates the obligation of signatory states to teach students "non-stereotypical gender roles" (article 14 of the convention).
Gender ideology elicits negative consequences in the form of psychological disorders, especially among children. After all, according to authoritative scientific studies, the level of cases of suicide has reached 41% among transgendered people, which is several times greater than indicators among the rest of the population (4.6%) who do not suffer gender dysphoria.
Popularization of the idea of the possibility of gender self-identification is dangerous for the future Ukrainian society, when one considers the catastrophic demographic situation in Ukraine. Therefore those who promote the Istanbul Convention actually are acting against Ukraine's future.
The ACCRO, without interfering in the personal life of each individual, decisively opposes having agencies of the state popularizing same-sex relations and showing a preference for gender ideology, in violation of the provision of the Ukrainian constitution banning a state ideology.
Instead of ratification of the Istanbul Convention, religious leaders urge the development of national legislation of Ukraine for preventing domestic violence and violence against women, as has been done by other countries of Europe which also have refused to ratify this convention (Great Britain, Lichtenstein, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Moldova, Armenia). (tr. by PDS, posted 13 June 2020)
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