By the decision of Lugansk Regional Department of Justice of April, 21, 1999 the Regional Information and Human-Rights Center for Gays and Lesbians Our World was denied state registration. The text of the denial reads: "A purpose of the public organization's activity — assistance for improvement of the social and psychological state of people of homosexual orientation and simultaneous reduction of the social tension towards this group of people in the Ukrainian society — does not meet the requirements of the law currently in force, viz Article 3 of the Law of Ukraine "About citizens' associations".

For today the legislation of Ukraine has no provisions which would obviously actively discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Yes, it is imperfect and does not protect sufficiently our rights, yet it doesn't contain bases for deprivation of these rights as well.

The equality of everybody before the law is guaranteed by the Constitution (Article 24); the same Constitution secures primary rights and freedoms of Ukrainian citizens including the right of freedom to unite into public organizations for protection of their rights and freedoms and satisfaction of political, economical, social, cultural and other interests exept for restriction prescribed by law for the interests of the national security and public order, the population's health protection, or protection of the rights and freedoms of the other people (Article 36). Besides, the Constitution points out that rights and freedoms of person and citizen secured in the Constitution are not complete (i.e. the Constitution as well protect rights that are not mentioned manifestly in it); the constitutional rights and freedoms are guaranteed and may not be abolished (Article 22).

The Article 3 of the Law of Ukraine "About citizens' associations" reads: "Public organization is an association of citizens for satisfaction and protection of their lawful social, economical, creative, age, national and cultural, sport and other common interests."

At first sight it is hard to understand why legal experts weren't satisfied. The Article 3 along with the Articles 1 and 2 of the law just gives definitions of conceptions and in particular expains the difference between public organization and political party, whose activity is regulated by this law too.

The essence of jurists' discontent becomes clearer from a letter of Ukrainian Ministry of Justice where was made the legal expert examination of the Center's statute documents, which has given occasion to the corresponding decision of the Department, namely in a similar reference to the Article 3 there are underlined words "their common interests".

Thus the Department (and the Ministry) believe that "assistance for improvement of the social and psychological state of people of homosexual orientation and simultaneous reduction of the social tension towards this group of people in the Ukrainian society" don't represent our common as members of the Center interests.

Here a lawful question emerges, who has to define our common interests — we or officials? It would be quite logical to surmise that citizens unite for satisfaction and protection of the lawful interests which they consider as common for themselves. And what are those common interests, citizens are to decide themselves. There says nowhere in the law that officials define limits of common interests on the basis of which citizens unite into public organizations.

As an argument against a reference to "common interests" it is possible to mention a case when an organization has no fixed membership (that is permitted by the law); then, following a logic of the Ministry of Justice's lawyers, such citizens' association may not exist at all, since it is incomprehensible how to determine the bounds of interests of non-fixed members.

Such interpretation of the law when an organization may only be engaged in protection of exclusively its members is contradicted by the very legal practice — in Ukraine there are registered and work such organizations as Amnesty International, Union of Ukrainian Women, numerous national and cultural societies, Association of Assistance for UNO, etc. Certainly these respected organizations work for changing the situation in the all Ukrainian state and society, not only strive for rights of their members.

Thus the reference to the Article 3 in the denial to registrate Our World Center is baseless.

Only article of the Law "About citizens' associations" which says about goals of organization's activity is Article 4. There is itemized an exclusive and complete list of the purposes which may not be recognized as lawful and should be forbidden, namely:

"- change by violent way of the constitutional order and in any illegal form the territorial integrity of the state;

- detriment to the security of the state in the form of conducting of activity in favour of foreign states;

- propaganda of war, violence or brutality, fascism or neofascism;

- fomentation of national and religious enmity;

- creation of unlawful paramilitary formations;

- restrictions of the universally recognized human rights."

It is clear that none of the goals of Our World Center's activity corresponds to this list.

Thereby unless purposes of a citizens' association conflict with the law — it means they are lawful. However it turned out that they don't think so in the Department of Justice. To take a decision about legalization of the Center the functionary of that needed a special instruction in the legislation which would specially permit gays and lesbians to establish their organizations!

The given reasons unambiguously show that denial of the state registration of the first in Ukraine gay human rights organization doesn't stand up to criticism at the standpoint of the letter and the spirit of the law.

Moreover it is necessary to emphasize that, without changing of all the our society, our rights, the rights of the Our World Center members, cannot be guaranteed, our lawful interests will not be protected and satisfied, as it has shown the experience of contacts with bureaucrats of justice.

There emerges a question — what for, properly speaking, was the Department of Justice so in need of looking for those doubtful pretexts to deny registration? The answer becomes clear when looking at the course of decision of the question about our registration.

The law and the regulations determine that an organization, that put in an application about registration and all the necessary documents, should either be registrated in two month or receive a motivated denial of registration. In our case after the expiration of the term determined by the law, a decision wasn't taken; the Department of Justice has broken the Article 15 of the law of Ukraine "About citizens' associations". Thereby the state body, destined to observe the law, itself broke it.

When cofounders of the Center after determined term turned to the Department of Justice, the head of the Department of Legal Information and State Registration informed them that the registration documents of the Center were just some days before mailed in the Ministry of Justice, since according to him our question is very complicated and he hadn't been able to find experts in the region which could make clear "how much this subject has a right to life and to state recognition". Certainly officials didn't wish to recognize a fact that such progress of events may not constitute justification for delay of decision-making about registration of the organization and that their actions or, rather, inaction, conflict with the law.

What the complexity of the question consisted in? What experts did the Department of Justice lack? This problem is merely legal; just lawyers of the department are to solve legal questions. Yet there were founded out startling things: to reach a decision about registration of the citizens' association the Department tried to get an opinion of sexopathologists! An article in the newspaper "Segodnya" (Today) vividly illustrates the level of thinking of officials. "You see, - was saying Vladimir Chikun, the head of the Department [of legal information and legalization], - it isn't that I do not want to legalize them. But how is it possible to recognize them on the state level, as a juridical person? A legislation base is absent, though it looks as this orientation is not forbidden, precedents as well… I legalize them, but later, sorry, there will come onanists, someone else… And what about morality?" According to Vladimir Nikolaevich [Chikun], he appeared between the devil and the deep sea. "I turned to the department of culture, public health, to sexopathologist. I asked: tell me, is it bad or not? No one answered anything concrete".

So, there are no any firm legal grounds to refuse and unwillingness to registrate is obvious. Please notice the words of the state legal functionary: "And what about morality?". Not the law worries our lawyers who are to observe and guard it but morality. Morality is relative conception that changes from time to time, from person to person, and it's normal. And what is inadmissible is that that the head of the department of the Department of Justice considers his morals at the minimum no less important than the law. So an observance of the law is less significant for him than raising his personal beliefs/prejudices in the rank of law!

Morals are based on ideology — and vice versa, of course. Thereupon it is worth to remember the Article 15 of the Constitution: "The social life in Ukraine is based upon principles of political, economical and ideological diversity. No ideology can be recognized by the state as compulsory." And the state functionary consider his personal ideology as a standard to compare lawfulness with and his attitude meets in fact with approval from the state legal body.

We were actually shocked when got to know in what wording was composed the inquiry sent to the Ministry of Justice. In the letter No. 1/12-311 of 2/03/99 concerning registration of Our World Center there is requested " to give a conclusion about the legality of an existence citizens with anomalous sexual orientation". Are we — gays and lesbians — lawful citizens of our country? — that is an object of doubts of the responsible official.

It is homophobia that means not just fear of homosexuality but any preconceived negative attitude toward this phenomenon.

Is it possible to speak about unbiased and common approach toward registration of Our World Center? Can it be called the normal state of things: gross violation of the legal terms, non-juridical consideration of legal questions, attempts to substitute the law with morals, the tactics of delays and formal replies? Maybe they in the Department of Justice think exactly so. Yet it is hard to believe that such approach is used for registration of every public organization — with such methods of work any chief wouldn't stay in his position. Therefore there has been applied a special approach toward Our World Center, that segregates it on some basis from the other various citizens' association. What is this basis? Here it is, of course: a wish to stand up for rights of homosexual people. In all other respects our aims and tasks on the whole agree with those for different public organizations: cultural, human rights, health protection, enlightening, and so on.

The preamble of the Law "About citizens' association" reads in particular that "the state promotes development ... of the social activity." Can one see state approval of our citizens' association?

The development of events about state registration of Our World Center, the official denial of its legalization just accentuate the necessity of establishing information and human rights organization for gays and lesbians in Ukraine — we have something to fight for and against; homophobia in the minds and actions of our people flourishes. Even privately, not advertising itself, even inperceptibly for oneself.

The founders of Our World Center are going to appeal against the decision of the Department of Justice in the court in a least while.