On March 6th, during a Forgiveness Sunday sermon, Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, hinted that the pride parades caused the war on Ukraine. Kiril implied that the expanding liberal Western values justified Putin’s war.
According to Kirill, the war in Ukraine is a test of “which side of God humanity will be on.” He also described the war as a conflict between supporters of gay pride events, including the western governments and Russia. “In order to join the club of those countries, you have to have a gay pride parade,” he said.
In February, Putin sent its “peace-keeping” soldiers across the Ukrainian border after months of amassing troops in its borders. Putin’s first move was to announce Russia’s recognition of the breakaway regions in Donbas.
The recognition of the breakaway republics, Donetsk and Luhansk, was followed by an all-out invasion, which Putin called a “special military operation.”
None of Putin’s fabricated rhetoric, no matter how far-fetched they were, implicated gay parades, the LGBTQ community, or religion as the cause of the invasion.
But for Patriarch Kirill, the war in Ukraine is a “loyalty test” for Western governments to recognize Ukraine. Kirill distortedly echoed the Kremlin’s recognition of the Donbas region as independent, adding his twist to it.
“In Donbas, there is a rejection, a fundamental rejection, of the so-called values that are offered today by those who claim world power,” Kirill explained.
“We know that if people or countries reject these demands, they are not part of that world; they become strangers to it,” he added.
Kirill accused Ukraine of warming up to the western powers by allowing LGBTQ communities and gay pride parades to flourish. He claimed that “if humanity accepts that sin is a variation of human behavior, the human civilization will end there.”
According to EqualDex, a collaborative LGBTQ+ knowledge base, LGBTQ rights in Ukraine have been flourishing. Ukraine’s LGBTQ rights can use a lot of improvements but are significantly better than those of Russia.
In 2013, Putin signed the “gay propaganda” law that curtailed the fundamental rights to dignity, health, education, information, and association of Russian LGBTQ.
A longtime Putin ally, Kirill has refrained from denouncing the Russian invasion. Instead, he capitalized on his shared views with Putin, calling the invasion a “metaphysical significance.”
