Poland’s conservative ruling Law and Justice Party sailed to electoral victory Sunday, after months of targeting the country’s LGBT community and stoking unfounded fear among residents.
The party’s win signals a potential slowdown in Poland’s burgeoning LGBT movement. However, this summer’s Pride events demonstrated a shift in attitude when youth who marched reach voting age.
The ruling party garnered more than 40% of the vote, granting the party a majority of seats in the lower house of parliament. The party’s closest rival, the Citizen’s Coalition, received less than 30% of the vote October 13.
The Law and Justice Party opposes any legal recognition of same-sex relationships and parenting. The coalition supports civil partnerships.
The Polish constitution deems marriage as only between a man and a woman.
Exit polls Sunday suggested turnout was more than 60%. If confirmed, it will be the highest percentage of votes since democracy was restored in Poland following communist rule in 1989.
It appears that the party’s ploy scapegoating the country’s LGBT community delivered. A similar tactic was used in 2015 when the party’s target was immigrants and refugees, experts watching Polish politics said.
Leading up to the vote, Cambridge University professor of Polish studies Stanley Bill told France24, “They’re very careful to say that they’re attacking what they call LGBT ideology as opposed to LGBT individuals – but the undertones are pretty clear.”
He pointed out that the Law and Justice party was “playing to their base with the LGBT issue, stoking fears to get socially conservative voters to go to the ballot box, because they need to maximize turnout.”
This summer, Poland’s LGBT community found itself under attack when it became the focus of the Law and Justice Party’s election campaign.
The party’s leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, verbally attacked the LGBT community. He was backed by leaders of the Catholic Church and local businesses, which placed “LGBT free zone” stickers on their businesses. A Polish court banned the sale of the stickers, which were distributed by Gazeta Polska, a conservative newspaper.
Kaczynski called gay people a “threat to Polish identity, to our nation, to its existence and thus to the Polish state” and same-sex parents, pro-LGBT judges upholding “LGBTQ ideology” as undermining Polish values. He topped off his campaign comments in August, calling the multiple Pride events, the most the country had ever seen, “traveling theater.”
Many of the Pride events were threatened by anti-gay violence but marchers received police protection.
Marek Jedraszewski, the archbishop of Krakow, echoed Kaczynski’s comments, calling the so-called LGBT lobby and “gender ideology” the new threat to Polish freedom and a “rainbow plague.”
The ruling party’s corruption scandals didn’t seem to weigh on most voters. Former Parliament speaker Marek Kuchcinski resigned in August for using government planes for his personal trips.
Flight or fight
Poland’s LGBT community can’t overlook the anti-gay rhetoric spewed by the country’s leaders and the rise in hate crimes. Queer Poles are responding by either leaving or fighting back.
Adam Juda, who was attacked while walking home from a gay bar over the summer, told ABC News that “life in Poland increasingly untenable.”
Many Polish gays agree, and like Juda, are considering leaving the country.
“I am nearly 40 and was beaten for the first time in my life because I am gay. When they call us a plague or perverts or pedophiles, they are stigmatizing us,” said Juda, who is angry about tax money “supporting the ruling party’s programs and the church when we are treated in such a dehumanizing way.”
Police don’t maintain statistics on hate crimes against LGBT people, Miroslawa Makuchowska, from the Campaign Against Homophobia, told ABC News. Despite the lack of official data, reports and media accounts of hate crimes against LGBT people have shown a “dramatic rise” in violence, she said.
Mariusz Kurc, the editor of Replika, Poland’s only LGBT magazine, assessed the situation as a backlash that will propel the movement forward as society becomes more accepting.
Pushing back against the hate this summer, Polish LGBT activists not only took to the streets in Equality Marches but also took to social media in a mass “coming out.” Thousands of people declared “I am LGBT” on their profiles.
Got international LGBT news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at WhatsApp: 415-517-7239, or Skype: heather.cassell, or oitwnews@gmail.com.
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