By Hilary White

KIEV, Ukraine, March 7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A committee of the Ukrainian Parliament is calling for a halt to the popularization of homosexuality that has become such a prominent feature of life in western European and North American societies. The Committee on the Issues of Freedom of Speech says the state must oppose the increasing promotion of “homosexualism, lesbianism, other sexual perversions, which do not correspond to moral principles of the society”.

The Committee’s report said, “Propaganda and expansion of homosexuality in the country form a threat to national security, contradict national interests and undermine the authority of rights and freedoms of human beings and family”.

The Ukraine is seeking membership in the European Union, the founding documents of which require the repeal of member country’s anti-homosexuality legislation. The Treaty of Amsterdam requires anti-discrimination legislation to be enacted by its member states.

A possible hurdle for the country’s entry into the EU is the fact that there is no positive law prohibiting “discrimination” against homosexuals, such as hate crimes laws, as there is in the UK, Germany and other EU nations where homosexual activists have been enormously successful in normalizing the “gay lifestyle”.

Homosexual relations were decriminalized in the Ukraine in 1991 and the country, at the same time, equalized its age of consent law. The term “sexual orientation” is not used anywhere in Ukrainian law.

The homosexual lobby has made little inroads in its efforts to popularize homosexuality in some of the countries of the former Soviet Bloc. Ukraine remains a staunchly Christian country and a recent poll showed that public support for the “gay” movement stands at only 15 per cent.

In February 2008, a group of Ukrainian deputies sent letters to a Christian organization, True Love Is Against Homosexuality, saying, “Propagation of homosexuality harms the moral education of children and youth by developing a perverted idea of human sexual life and the natural orientation of men and women”.

Yulia Timoshenko and Bloc deputy Ihor Yeresko, said in the letter that “it looks absurd when moral dissipation and sexual freedom are supported under the pretext of non-discrimination at the legislative level”.

In late February the All-Ukrainian Association of Christian Journalists, Publishers and Linguists, Novomedia, issued a statement expressing indignation at the broadcast of the US homosexual propaganda film, Brokeback Mountain, on television. They chastised the TV station, saying that “the channel not only dared to broadcast a film popularizing perversion and immoral behavior but also did it at prime time, when most families watch TV together”.

Ukraine’s deep commitment to Christianity may become a stumbling block for its relations with the aggressively secularist European Union. Unlike the EU that refused to acknowledge in its constitution the two millennia of Christian culture that defines Europe, Ukraine is deeply proud of its Christian heritage. Ukraine’s President Victor Yushchenko met recently with Orthodox Patriarch Filaret Denysenko of Kyiv to discuss the coming celebration of the 1020th Anniversary Baptism of Kyivan Rus, the medieval state dominated by the city of Kiev.