The Ukrainian legal community still treats the LGBTQ+ community awkwardly, if not aggressively. And it’s their loss, economists say.

June is Pride Month, which is the month of support for the LGBTQ+ community.

Almost every other top law firm has supported this trend for many years: in early June, all their logos on LinkedIn become rainbow.

Ukrainian law firms are not following their more international counterparts in this regard.

We spoke to Asters, Axon Partners, and Everlegal, as well as White & Case and The Law Society of England and Wales about why lawyers supported the LGBT community and looked at such support from a cynical (economic) point of view.

History of the question

In June 2020, Asters repainted the logo in rainbow colors. Then DLS made an impromptu poll and got very unexpected results: half of our community, as it turned out, was hostile to this act of support for Pride performed by the Asters:

Then we conducted a more detailed anonymous survey about how LGBT people are treated in the offices of top law firms. And received even more unexpected answers. For our material, Yehor Lysov and Dmytro Chaika talked about how they feel in the legal community.

In 2021, we repeated the research, during which we fought off the Telegram attack by the “Traditions and Order” channel. Here are the results of our research, which we presented simultaneously with the podcast.

In 2022, we did not do research because it was not the time for that. But this year, as many as four companies repainted their logos. We thought it would be worth talking to know their goal.

Why do companies repaint their logos?

Not all firms explain why they do this. Foreign companies have been doing this for many years in a row, so everything has been explained a long time ago. Many of them have quite voluminous sections on diversity on their website (Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Linklaters LLP, Baker & McKenzie). And for some, for example, White & Case, it is a direct part of the communication strategy: “We celebrate Pride month every June to recognize the impact of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and other nonconforming (LGBTQ+) people around the world. Support for diversity and inclusion (diversity & inclusion, or simply D&I) is part of our communication strategy,” White & Case responded to our request.

Asters say that the decision to repaint the logo reflects the company’s values that all people are different but equal in their rights. “There should be no discrimination based on gender identity. The company not only changes its logo in June but also makes every effort to adhere to these principles in its daily work,” Asters said.

As part of the support for the diversity & inclusion initiative, Asters advise on the “She is Science” bono project, organized the “Senses” exhibition as part of ArtAsters, joined the UNFPA Declaration for Gender Equality and Prevention of Domestic Violence, is a participant in the “Business without Barriers” initiative, joined the Enjoying Live Foundation project “Adult Intern’s Week”, based on the results of which the company offered official employment.

Axon Partners say that in this way, they show support for the LGBTQ+ community and remind of this position. “But we didn’t change the logo from a regular one to a rainbow one: we changed one rainbow one to another, and we had the previous one all year. This one will probably also stand until next June, it is becoming a tradition,” says Axon Partners partner Mykhailo Yudin.

Pride is supported not only by companies but also by entire associations. For example, the Law Society of England and Wales repainted its logo. “For more than 50 years, the legal profession has supported our LGBTQ+ members and their allies during Pride and beyond. Our logo is just one reflection of this. Our logo includes the Progressive Pride flag. We include this so we are inclusive of intersex people, represent more LGBTQ+ communities, and reflect the diversity of LGBTQ+ solicitors. We want to ensure that all our members feel represented and recognized within the six color Rainbow Flag.” – Law Society President Lubna Shuja responded to our request.

Does discrimination exist?

Our field research in the past years has shown that discrimination not only does exist, but it would seem modern lawyers treat LGBT people like the Taliban treat women.

Mykhailo Yudin believes that hardly anything has changed since that time. Not only in the legal community but in the even more modern IT community, there are still vacancies where one of the requirements is not belonging to the LGBT community (a recent case of Soft.ua). “You may also add the non-recognition of same-sex marriages, homophobic attitudes in parts of society – these are only the tip of the iceberg,” says Mykhailo.

He is also supported by Mykhailo Ruzhytskyi, a partner at Everlegal, who tells the following story to confirm his words.

“Several years ago, when I was studying human rights, the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (UHHRU) offered me to conduct a strategic case related to the arson of the Zhovten movie theatre. You may remember the story, a film about #LGBT life was shown in the cinema, “normal” people entered the hall, threw smoke grenades, the audience had to flee in panic, and the theater almost burned to the ground.

At that time, my clients were formally the “Zhovten” movie theatre and the individual Dennis Panin. I wrote statements of the crime from both, various motions and complaints that should make the investigation more effective in investigating the motives of the crime. And if the movie theater’s requests were more or less answered, Dennis’ appeal was completely ignored. During the meeting, the investigator made it clear that he was busy with more important matters than “responding to the appeal of a gay man.”

Later, I learned about dozens of other cases where LGBT people were the victims of attacks, but no one investigated the crimes. While the ECHR requires states to investigate violent crimes against minorities with particular care, law enforcement agencies in Ukraine skillfully sabotage them.

Then there was the court hearing and the lawyer of the defendants (those who set fire to the movie theater) as an excuse for his clients hinted to the court that there were gathered gay people, not “normal ones” and presented it as a mitigating circumstance of hooliganism. This argument should have caused great indignation, but instead it “came in” with the judge. Such a “circular understanding”.

Axon Partners recently also took up the representation of the interests of LGBTQ+ activist and military officer Petro Zherukha in the case of challenging the position of the Lviv Regional Council regarding the institute of registered partnerships.

We represent Petro Zherukha, a defender in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who was not afraid to stand up for his rights in this difficult time, when our society is tearing away his right to live according to the laws, where is a person, their life and health, honor and dignity, inviolability and security is the highest social value. This statement has no objection to emotions or even to opposition of our state to the orders of the aggressor state. As we can see from the cited decision and the book, the dilemma of same-sex unions is not a dilemma exclusively of totalitarian regimes, rather the opposite.

Instead, as a legal company, we want to appeal to the law and legal methods of protecting our clients. That is why we prepared and submitted a statement of claim for recognition as illegal and annulment of paragraph 1.2 of the decision of the Lviv Regional Council dated 06.04.2023 No. 477 on the appeal of the Lviv Regional Council to the President of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine regarding the draft Law of Ukraine “On the Institute of Registered Partnerships”. After all, we believe that the Lviv Regional Council had no right to submit such a statement to the Verkhovna Rada.

In this way, we join the movement, the main goal of which is that in Ukrainian society, same-sex couples do not feel like outsiders or people lower in dignity and value.”

In 2022, Freedom House recorded 39 cases of acts of homophobia or transphobia and hate speech by private individuals or groups in Ukraine. They qualified 22 of these cases as crimes. However, there is no detailed table and information about qualifications in the report, so it is difficult to understand what kind of crimes these were.

In the Criminal Code, there is a special article 161 for cases of discrimination – violation of the equality of citizens depending on their racial, national, regional affiliation, religious beliefs, disability, and on other grounds. However, we did not find any high-profile cases based on homophobia in this article. Most often, such crimes are assessed as bodily harm of varying degrees or hooliganism.

And such crimes rarely come to court. In November 2021, the Galician District Court of Lviv sentenced one of the hooligans who attacked musicians in Lviv to four years and one month in prison. Attacked because they seemed gay to him. This decision became the first case in Ukraine when a prison term was imposed for a crime committed on the grounds of homophobia. The classification of the crime is hooliganism. The homophobic motive was indicated in the motivational part of the decision.

In June 2023, the Lutsk Community Center for the LGBTQI+ community was attacked. The attackers broke down the door and staged a pogrom. The public organization that took care of the center considered it a hate crime.

The police classified it as a theft: “The police received a report about a theft in one of the office premises on vulytsia Kopernyka. The thief entered the room through the window and took some things from there. The police promptly identified and detained the perpetrator. He turned out to be a 41-year-old Lutsk resident. He is currently in a temporary detention facility. The issue of declaring a suspicion and selecting a preventive measure is being resolved. The investigation started under Part 4 of Article 185 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine is ongoing.”

There are fewer cases related to LGBT+ rights outside the criminal law, but they exist:

administrative cases on the granting of the right to reside in Ukraine, where the party declares a relationship with LGBT people as a reason for granting a residence permit in Ukraine (usually this does not work, or works if the country to which the applicant wants to be deported is dangerous in itself, not only for LGBT).

administrative cases related to mass actions.

The most memorable is the attempt of the All-Ukrainian public organization “Gay-Alliance Ukraine” to recognize as illegal the inaction of the Odesa police during the “Odesa Pride-2020” queer culture festival. In 2020, Gay-Alliance Ukraine organized the event “Let’s walk with us. Everything will be Pride.” The event was disrupted by “Tradition and Order” activists.

As the main radical column ran toward the Equality March, police lined up in a ring, trapping Pride participants inside. The radicals threw stones, sticks, and bottles, threatened to rape, and tried to pull the participants out of the environment. Ten participants of the march got burns on their faces and hands from pepper spray. However, the police did not react to these actions but began to react when one of the policemen was injured, as a result of which, the police did not neutralize and did not prevent the opponents of the Equality March from committing their illegal actions, but on the contrary, surrounded the organizers of the “Chain of Support”. The organizers were blocked, and other participants were forced to run away.

The NGO “Gay-Alliance Ukraine” filed a lawsuit because they believed that the event failed due to the improper performance of its functions by the police – they were reduced to passive observation and the creation of a physical barrier between the participants of “Odesa Pride” and the attackers.

However, the court of the first instance and court of appeal rejected the claim and decided that the police had done enough.

Admittedly, we expected to find more civil lawsuits for discrimination. But in recent years, only one has been found – in connection with discrimination in employment.

The student submitted a CV through Work.Ua. for the position of logistics manager. The next day, he was told that they do not hire people with non-traditional sexual orientations. The court rejected the claim because a resume through Work.Ua is not an official application for employment. And submitting a CV to a potential employer does not cause any obligations.

The world’s tenth economy

This year, Kyivstar, Ukrposhta, Lifecell, Comfi, and even the Ministry of Foreign Affairs supported Pride. This is not yet widespread, but already quite visible support. Therefore, it is interesting that Ukrainian law firms are still so careful with this topic.

And for those firms that are accustomed to measuring the possible outcomes of their public moves before making them, rather than doing something “because it’s the right thing to do,” we have two thoughts that we came across while researching this topic.

The first thought was voiced on the podcast of Wharton, one of the top business schools. They called Justin Nelson, president of the National LGBT Trade Association of the USA. So, he says that any business that needs customers should pay attention to the LGBTQ+ community simply for economic reasons. “The LGBTQ+ community, their families, and friends are 16-22 million people in the United States. And these are business owners, entrepreneurs, employers, and top managers. According to our calculations, this community generates 1.7 trillion dollars, so if we were a country, we would be among the tenth largest economies in the world. It is rather short-sighted for companies to exclude this tenth economy of the world from their radars,” he says.

The second opinion was formulated by the mathematician and economist Nasim Taleb. In his latest book, Skin in the Game, he explains, in particular, why it is profitable for manufacturers to make all their products halal, while less than 1 percent of consumers of halal products in the United States. He posted this section in his Medium, and we advise you to read it in its entirety. But here is a brief review of the thought.

In order to produce halal and non-halal products separately, it is necessary to have separate halal and non-halal ingredients in the warehouse, different packaging, and possibly different production processes. It is always easier and more efficient to have fewer business processes. Accordingly, the rule works: consumers of halal products will not consume non-halal products, but consumers of non-halal products do not care, they will consume both. That’s how it turns out that the minority (consumers of halal products) influence the majority (what to eat).

Finally, let me make a prediction. Next June, at least twice as many law firms will repaint their logos. Someone will do it because they wanted to for a long time; they were just waiting for the Artzinger and Everlegal to be repainted first. Someone will do this because, in other things as well, they also imitate the communication of international firms. Someone might like an idea from a business school podcast about the unaccounted tenth economy.

So, next year rub our noses at it if eight Ukrainian law firms don’t repaint their logos in a rainbow by June 10, 2024.