Poland quietly slid to authoritarianism III: war with LGBT

This article is the third and final part of the triptych I am writing about the current political situation in Poland. If you haven't read the previous parts, I recommend you to read the introductory post ( here ), and my observations of changes in social behavior on the example of children after the first months of propaganda directed against people of other religions or other nationalities ( here ).

In today's last article, I will describe a change in government policy, which at one point decided to give up further public witch-hunt against Muslims and focused on creating a new public enemy that has been LGBT people for several years. I will briefly describe the course of the persecution, the culmination point in which the community rebelled and resisted the state and the police, and I will try to analyze what changes this rebellion brought about and what the situation of LGBT people in the country looks like today.

It is difficult for me to write this article. Although I managed to leave the country, many of my relatives remain vulnerable to violence and political persecution. Due to the intensification of homophobic attacks in the country, my depression, which I struggled with again for over a year (I managed to get out of it), got stronger. Not wanting to remain powerless, I prepared infographics in English and Spanish, which were shared from my social media over 800 times and which were presented on the streets of Rosario. I provide them as graphics for this article.

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Discrimination against a populist government

The situation of LGBT people in Poland has never been perfect, although in many ways it was better than in other places in the world. From a historical perspective, when in the rest of the world homosexual contacts remained illegal and people of a different sexual orientation were imprisoned, Poland has never had a law that would persecute minorities. However, sexuality itself was highly tabooed. People in same-sex relationships were exposed to social stigma, which was often used by governments to blackmail them. Among the insurgents who fought for the liberation of Warsaw from the hands of the Nazis during World War II, there was homosexuals and, at least one open transsexual person, but after the war, historians tried to erase the memory of them, although they lived and testified to those facts until the early 2000s. During the communism, the secret police carried out the "Chiacynt operation", which consisted of finding homosexuals, torturing them to obtain information about other members of the community, and blackmailing them by disclosing information to family and friends if they caught person refused to report the authority about resistance movements. In the early 1990s, activists were attacked for merely admitting a non-normative sexual orientation.

In 2005, before the first Gay March was organized in Warsaw, the then president of the city tried to ban the event. His decision was revoked by European courts, the march took place, but the police did not protect it sufficiently. It resulted in many fights. The mayor of the city, as revenge, also decided to close the cultural center, which was the place of gatherings of LGBT activists.

Since then, the number of equality marches has increased significantly. They were held every year in several of the largest cities, always under the police force, but never completely safe, due to the nationalists who, after the event, organized "hunting for participants". Until last year, none of the events received official patronage from the city hall.

Until 2015, when the populists took power, the Senate debated three times on the introduction of civil unions, but each time it failed to do so. The number of LGBT organizations has tripled, several high-profile social campaigns have been carried out, the number of gay clubs, theaters, cultural centers, and events has increased, many famous people from the world of movies and literature came out of closed. At one time in the government, there was a transgender person, as the fifth in the world, and openly homosexual people, of which the most popular of them, Robert Biedroń, later became the president of a large city and even created his political party. Although this information may indicate a comfortable situation, the society was still partially intolerant, gays were attacked in the streets, insulted, blackmailed, and sometimes lost their jobs. Everything was going very slowly in the right direction, but the speed of change was so slow that outside the center of Warsaw or Krakow, the two largest cities, simply holding your partner's hand was considered an act of heroic courage.

And then there were changes in the government. It was starting to get scary and dangerous. Continuous homophobic politicians' statements, happily repeated by the state media, have encouraged homophobes to attack more openly. When a girl was beaten for walking around town with a rainbow-colored bag, the political message was "we do not approve of hooligan behavior, but we understand it." Then the situation of an IKEA employee became loud. Rainbow bags for sale have been launched in this chain of Swedish furniture stores. One of the employees began to speak out loudly that homosexuals deserved death, citing Bible. By the labor law, which prohibits the spread of homophobic views at work in Poland, IKEA decided to dismiss an employee. The Minister of the Interior, Zbigniew Ziobro, intervened himself, calling the incitement to kill homosexuals "religious freedom" and announcing legal proceedings against the manager of the chain of stores.

In the meantime, there were other minor outrageous events: a printer in Lodz, the third-largest city in Poland, refused to print leaflets about the LGBT event by one of the organizations. The case was appealed and the court forced the payment of compensation, but once again the Minister of the Interior interfered, invoking "economic freedom" and acquitting the printer. In addition, when people in same-sex relationships began to go abroad to get married in other European Union countries, the Minister announced the preparation of a special list of people who "operate contrary to Polish law" by getting married abroad. The list was never created, but the public announcements of its preparation itself had a freezing effect and many people gave up concluding weddings.

The most intense campaign of contempt began in 2020, during the presidential election. Then, in a very short period, there were dozens of terrifying incidents, which together can be considered a form of rout committed against LGBT people. It started with the harsh words of the president-elect, who said that LGBT "it's not people, it's just an ideology." MEPs from the populist party echoed him. Many spoke of gays and lesbians as "worse than Nazis and communists" and one MP, Czarnek, now the Minister of Education, said that "gays and lesbians are worse than ordinary people." The president announced a ban on the adoption of children by homosexual persons (currently same-sex couples cannot adopt children in Poland, but any person can apply for adoption as a single parent) and he will stop sex education in schools. The first promise was never realized, but the second one was to some extent so, because a year later Minister Czarnek limited the possibility of conducting lessons by external institutions, including educational institutions teaching about sexual safety.

This year there were two very dangerous incidents at the Equality Marches - in Lublin, a couple tried to carry and detonate a homemade bomb in the middle of the Parade. The police managed to catch them on time, but thanks to the repeated interference of Zbigniew Ziobro, the charges of terrorism were dropped and they were only sentenced to one year in prison. They left just before the next edition of the equality march.
The second incident took place in Bialystok, a very nationalist city in Eastern Poland. The local parish priest gathered nationalists and they decided to prevent the first Equality March in the city. Groups of hooligans attacked people, kicked them unconscious, threw stones at them. The participants hid in shops and in the houses of people who opened the door for them, tried to call the police, but the police did not react. The events in Białystok were officially classified as a rout, but none of the criminals who committed physical attacks to this day have been convicted.

The politicians immediately received support from their allies. First, the Catholic Church, which began a series of sermons on homosexuality, equating it with the worst sins. Archbishop Jędraszewski, who called homosexuals "the rainbow plague", went the furthest. He was properly rewarded for this. Several journalists found ample evidence that the archbishop was covering up pedophilia in his region. They published prooves in a long film "just do not tell anyone" ("Tylko nie mów nikomu"), which on the day of the premiere was watched by over two million Poles. For words of support for the government, the national prosecutor's office, which, after legal changes, was centralized in the hands of one person, the homophobic Zbigniew Ziobro, whom I wrote earlier, never started an investigation and did not condemn Archbishop Jędraszewski.

The second weapon in the crusade against LGBT people was the state-owned media. One of the periodic then attached a sticker "LGBT free zone" in addition to the newspaper. They were encouraging readers to put it on the door of their business. This action, so similar to what the German Reich did with the Jews just before the outbreak of the war, caught the attention of world public opinion. However, instead of toning down its actions, the government decided to go a step further and introduced a law which was to call individual regions of Poland "LGBT-free zones". They did so with the help of the lawyers of Ordo Iuris, a controversial ultra-Catholic institution against abortion, homosexuality, and even divorce. The institution is originally from Brazil. Ordo Iuris has been banned in most places in the world, but in Poland, it is still doing great, and its representatives now are in the government and even perform ministerial functions.

LGBT-Free Zones were noticed by the European Union thanks to artist Bart Staszewski, who started to take pictures of himself at the information boards of cities, villages, and towns “LGBT-free”, informing that his stay in them was de facto illegal. The government reacted furiously, suing Bart Staszewski of hundreds of criminal cases for defamation and trying to terrorize him and prevent further action, which luckily only backfired.

The European Union and the Helsinki Foundation have frozen some subsidies for regions that have adopted homophobic laws. A few regions, therefore, withdrew from the scandalous legal changes. The majority, in which the Law and Justice politicians were ruling, did not change their minds. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs started its grant program to reward them for homophobia. The ministry fund also subsidizes nationalist organizations that openly express homophobic, Islamophobic, and xenophobic views. To this day, the battle with the European Union continues, which is even considering the suspension of Poland's membership rights if the situation of LGBT people, as well as destructive changes in judicial law and the attack on free media, will not be stopped. Poland maintains that there is no homophobia in the country and cites police statistics in which homophobic attacks are reported less frequently than in any other European country. However, as evidenced by other studies, this result is due to critically low trust in the police and fear of secondary homophobia. As many as 70% of LGBT people in Poland admit to having experienced violence at least once in their life. Only less than 4% reported it to the police.

The government did not stop at these actions. The Christian Reformed Church, which granted symbolic marriages to same-sex couples, was banned, and the archbishop of the church, Szymon Niemiec, was accused of offending religious feelings (this accusation was canceled by a higher court only last week, one year after the charges were brought).

The artist Elżbieta Podleśna, who painted a picture of Mary with a rainbow halo around her head, was also arrested scandalously. An intimidating media show was made of the arrest. An elderly woman was dragged out of the house at five in the morning, her arm was twisted and her apartment was devastated, allegedly in search of evidence. Elżbieta Podleśna was released from custody after several hours and acquitted by the court, but it was not imprisoning artists that were the goal of the government, but another form of intimidation that was supposed to shut the mouths of LGBT people.

Groups of nationalists also joined the action and began spraying homosexuals' homes and apartments with such indiscriminate slogans as "a traitor to the nation lives here". Windows were also broken (once again) in the oldest LGBT organization, Campaign Against Homophobia (KPH). When the organization reported the broken windows to the police, they heard that maybe they should better hide.

With the escalation of the government's homophobic actions, which fell on society like an avalanche in just a few months, the mentioned before Ordo Iuris became more active. They bought over a dozen vans, they put homophobic slogans on it, suggesting that every gay was a pedophile and rapist, and began to drive them around the largest cities reading propaganda slogans from megaphones.

A young polyamory non-binary anarchist-LGBT activist, Margot from the Stop Bzdurom collective, could not stand it and stopped one of the homophobic vans, engaging in an aggressive discussion with its driver. She was accused of physical assault, which was tragicomic in itself, as no physical attack was seen on many of the tapes that were made by her partners at the scene. It is also worth mentioning that Margot is a fragile person when the driver was a typical muscular man. This was too much for the LGBT community - the event led to protests on an unprecedented scale.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in a spontaneous protest outside Margot's house to express their protest against the homophobic actions of the government and, above all, solidarity with Margot, who was supposed to be arrested on that day taken to a police station by a patrol. Usually, peaceful protest slogans were replaced with strong slogans "get the fuck out" ("wypierdalać"), which were later widely commented on by symmetrists who did not understand that the situation in which LGBT persons were posed required aggression. This aggression, although not directly present in the crowd's behavior, was felt in the air. The crowd seemed to say that we have nothing to lose, we are ready to fight, you have taken everything from us.
A police patrol arrived and Margot left the house, wanting to put herself in their hands peacefully, but the arrest did not take place. The police withdrew and departed from the scene, which the crowd viewed optimistically as an expression of the government's surrender. As it turned out, it was quite the opposite - the police were ordered to arrest the activist in an atmosphere of riots, and as these did not take place, they decided to delay the case longer.

The overjoyed crowd went to the Zbawiciela Square in the city center where they placed the flag on the statue of Christ and danced to the music played from the loudspeakers, then policemen dressed in civilian clothes came among the participants and began to hit them with clubs, beat and terrorize. Margot and 40 other protesters were closed and then held in custody for 48 hours with no food or drinking water, denied access to a lawyer, and in some cases even to the toilet. Police officers took pleasure in beating and falling protesters, who were often elderly or teenagers.
People who had placed an LGBT flag on the statue of Christ were also arrested. Candles commemorating those who had taken their own lives due to homophobic persecution were destroyed.

The strikes did not end - vigils were organized under the police headquarters, the next day a wave of protests flooded the entire map of Poland. People attended the meetings in great numbers, even though they knew they might not return home and that at any moment a peaceful protest by the police could turn into a brawl. It has become a standard to write a lawyer number on your hand so that even if you answer a phone call, you have contact with someone who will help in unfair detention.

Summary

While in custody, Margot was devastated, beaten in such a way as not to leave any traces, her partner was effectively intimidated and she no longer wants to participate in further protests, which with time have ceased to be so numerous. Has the change changed anything? It was believed that the scale of violence and breaking democratic rules unprecedented since 1989 would draw the world's attention to the situation in Poland, but little has changed in this regard. Today, the government continues its homophobic beliefs, makes life difficult for activists, and does not react to violence. Statistically, 29% of LGBT people in Poland suffer from depression (the rate for the entire country is only 5%), there is an exodus - LGBT people leave the country en masse, and the civil liberties of non-heteronormative people, according to the IGLAA Europe report, are deteriorating year by year. Since 2020, Poland is the most homophobic country in the European Union and the fifth most homophobic country on the continent.

The only thing that has changed for the better is the visibility of LGBT people and their problem in the independent media and society. It cannot be said that Poland is not a homophobic country without a huge dose of ignorance or being a homophobe who does not want to notice the problem. Although the situation in the country is much worse than it was a few years ago, the foundations have been laid to introduce major legislative changes in the future. The cost of these foundations was very high though, and no one can take power from Law and Justice and seize this opportunity.

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Thanks for reading this post. As this part of the story is about me and my relatives personally, it took me much longer than it should have been. The emotional baggage related to the past years' events is huge, and I had to take breaks in writing to prevent memories from overwhelming me. Nevertheless, I did not avoid the situation where I wrote with tears in my eyes. However, I believe that writing about what happened in Poland is very important. If we don't talk about it out loud, much worse things can happen.
@ papi.mati

sources:
<sub>1. about Stop Bzdurom collective
2. about police brutality
3. about arresting protesters
4. about homophobic trucks
5. about the spontanous protests of LGBT
6. about presidential words "LGBT worse than communism
7. about homophobic rhetoric of president
8. about homophobic hate-speech
9. about the rainbow flag on Christ statue
10. about LGBT-free zones
11. another about LGBT-free zones in Poland
12. about political attacks to divide society
13. about arresting Elzbieta Podleśna
14. another about arresting Elżbieta Podleśna
15. about EU reaction
16. about situation of LGBT in Poland in general
17. about MP Czarnek saying "human rights are idiotism" and "LGBT are not equal to normal people"
18. about LGBT free zones and losing EU funds
19. one more about LGBT free zones and EU penalty
20. about LGBT leaving country
21. About homophobic ideology inspired by eastern policy
22. about Ordo Iuris institute
23. about Archbishop Jędraszewski comparing LGBT to plague
24. another about Archbishop Jędraszewski
25. the most homophobic country in EU - reportage by BBC
26. ILGA Europe report 2020
27. About violence during Bialystok gay pride
28. another about brutal violence in Białystok
29. About IKEA case
30. another about IKEA case
31. about LGBT free zone stickers
32. about the bomb on the gay pride
33. another about the bomb on the gay pride
34. About Poland as the most homophobic country in European Union
35. about homophobic TV propaganda
36. about delegalizing Reformative Church for supporting LGBT</sub>