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She also decried "media brainwash" and said it would be spiritually wrong to support a Ukrainian victory over Russia.
Conservative pundit Candace Owens falsely claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a “homosexual actor” in a post to social media, adding it would be spiritually wrong for her to support a victory by Ukraine over Russia in a post to social media.
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Russia annexed parts of Ukraine in 2014, then invaded Ukraine in 2022.
“No amount of media brainwash [sic] in the world could ever make me hope that Zelensky triumphs over an orthodox Russia,” Owens posted to social media on Dec. 3. “Spiritually, I just know that’s wrong. You simply do not support a homosexual actor that is locking up churches and bishops.”
Zelensky is married to Olena Zelenska, has fathered a child, and has never identified as LGBTQ+, as was noted by one commenter.
“Zelensky is married with kids and clearly loves his family. Putin on the other hand has a man crush on Steven Seagal and we don't even know his ‘family,’” one viewer posted. “Is Candace on the Kremlin payroll or is she just posting hate for clicks?”
Owens has a history of racist, transphobic, and homophobic rhetoric.
In 2023, she reportedly made inflammatory comments directed at Native Americans and Two-Spirit identities at a public event, journalist Victoria Brownworth reported in a post to social media at the time.
“Is this like a Native American tribe, like high smoking and talking about your spirit? I’m asking you seriously because when I think of Native American tribes talking about their spirits, I know that they used to smoke a lot. They used to do drugs. They also were cannibals who used to eat people,” Brownworth reported Owens said.
In January, she declared a link between “big Pharma” and “its clinical promotion of insanity” among school children and called the LGBTQ+ community a “sexual plague” following a school shooting in Perry, Iowa.
“Gender dysphoria is a mental disorder and the entire LGBTQ movement brought with it a sexual plague on our society,” Owens posted to social media.
In March, Owens aired a story titled “Is France’s First Lady a man?” referring to an article suggesting that Brigitte Macron, the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, secretly identifies as transgender and that Brigitte and her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux, are the same person.
“Stop everything and watch this!” Owens posted to social media. “Not a joke or an exaggeration to say that barring political assassinations, this is likely the biggest scandal that has ever happened in politics in human history.”
In September, Owens declared that TikTok was “socially engineering” men to be gay and turning women against men as part of a broader conspiracy by Hollywood, the media, and psychoanalysts to manipulate Americans to engage in what she calls “unnatural” behaviors.
“They’re not socially engineering us to do good things,” Owens said on her podcast, Candace, in September. “They are making men more and more effeminate, encouraging effeminate behavior, and convincing women to hate men. This is just what I see happening, and it’s terrifying.”
Ukraine has a mixed record on LGBTQ+ rights. While same-sex sexual relations are legal and employment discrimination based on sexual and gender identity is banned in the country, there are no housing protections or recognition of nonbinary or transgender identities. Russia is currently cracking down on its LGBTQ+ citizens with gay bars being raided by police in recent months.
