J. Lester Feder

That’s why I’m partnering with Ukrainian organizations and All Out on a campaign supporting partnership rights and hate crime protections. The stories in The Queer Face of War are still unfolding.

Stories are a tool for action — and international solidarity matters when queer people and democracy are under pressure worldwide. In Ukraine, even after growing public support for partnership rights, conservative politicians are pushing to reverse that momentum.

Today, The Queer Face of War is published in the US, the UK, and worldwide. As Russia’s full scale invasion enters its fourth year, the book documents how homophobia was weaponized during the invasion—and how queer Ukrainians fought back. Available now: thequeerfaceofwar.com

His loss is deeply felt in Ukraine’s LGBTQ+ community and beyond. But his legacy — of beauty, defiance, and courage — lives on in everyone who refuses to disappear.

We first met at a joint Pride march between Warsaw Pride and Kyiv Pride, where Marlen presided over the Ukrainian float like a guardian angel — radiant, fearless, larger than life.

I was saddened to learn of the death of Marlen Scandal shortly before The Queer Face of War was published. Marlen was a veteran, an activist in two revolutions, and a drag performer who carried Ukraine’s story across the world. 🕯️

📩 Subscribe to The Queer Face of War newsletter to read more stories like Oleksii’s — and to see how queer visibility continues to shape Ukraine’s fight for freedom. thequeerfaceofwar.com

Opponents of queer rights know this too — that’s why they try to erase queer history from libraries and queer people from public life. Visibility is a weapon of resistance.

Nazi Germany sent 15,000 queer men to concentration camps. Not one told their story publicly until nearly 30 years after Hitler’s death. Here’s why that silence — and one man’s decision to break it — matters for my book cover. 🧵

This invisibility had real consequences. Hitler’s sodomy law was one of the only Nazi codes left on West Germany’s books after WWII. Historians estimate West Germany arrested more gay men than the Nazis did.

There’s never been a project like this, since queer people usually have to stay hidden in war zones because they’re targeted for violence.

After a few trips to Ukraine, I realized I was building a historic collection of portraits and oral history, giving a broad look at a queer community in war.

When BuzzFeed News hired me as a global queer rights correspondent in 2013, my first assignment took me to Kyiv, where I wrote about how Russia was trying to scare Ukrainians away from alliances with western democracy with slogans like: