Polish village sues activist over “harmful and defamatory” LGBT-free zone signs

A Polish anti-defamation group is supporting a village in bringing a lawsuit against an LGBT activist who mounted a sign declaring it to be an “LGBT-free zone”.

The Polish League Against Defamation claims that such signs – which the activist, Bartosz Staszewski, has erected outside various communities that adopted anti-LGBT resolutions – unjustly harm their reputation.

LGBT-free zones “do not exist” in Poland, says the organisation’s president, Maciej Świrski. The “false and defamatory” claims that they do “scares away tourists and investors”, means “less chance of obtaining European funds”, and threatens “Polish national security”, he tells TVP Info.

The village in question, Zakrzówek, last year became one of many places in Poland to declare itself “free from LGBT ideology”. Most such resolutions have been supported by councillors from the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.

Other councils have adopted “Charters of Family Rights” that do not mention LGBT specifically but reject same-sex marriage and call for the “protection of children from moral corruption”, language often used to suggest that the LGBT movement is a threat to Polish youth.

In response to these developments, Staszewski began a project earlier this year in which he puts up signs saying “LGBT-free zone” in various languages outside such communities and takes photographs of LGBT people in front of them.

Some observers, especially outside Poland, mistakenly believed the signs to be genuine. Guy Verhofstadt, the former prime minister of Belgium and a prominent figure in the European Parliament, retweeted Staszewski’s images and wrote that “the Polish authorities have put up these disgusting anti-LGBTI+ signs”.

The term “LGBT-free zone” has now been widely adopted to refer to the resolutions. It was recently used by both European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and US presidential candidate Joe Biden, both of whom condemned “LGBT-free zones”.

In response, figures from Poland’s ruling coalition – which has led an aggressive anti-LGBT campaign since early last year – and conservative commentators have argued that the term is false. They point out that no local authority in Poland has used the specific term “LGBT-free zone”.

Instead, they say that the resolutions are aimed against “LGBT ideology” – what they claim is a dangerous set of ideas that threatens Poland – rather than against people who hold a particular sexual orientation or gender identity.

In response to Biden’s remarks, the Polish embassy in Washington tweeted that his “assertion is based on inaccurate media information, as no ‘LGBT-free zones exist’ in Poland. The Polish government is committed to rule of law, equal rights and social inclusion”.

Staszewski’s campaign has also attracted criticism from outside conservative circles. Last week, Gazeta Wyborcza, a newspaper strongly critical of the government and its stance on LGBT rights, published an online column saying that the activist’s “absurd” and “deceptive” actions were harming Poland’s image. “There are no LGBT-free zones,” wrote the author, Piotr Głuchowski.

However, after the column received criticism (including from some of the newspaper’s own journalists) and Staszewski threatened to sue, Gazeta Wyborcza took it offline. It has refused to comment on the issue since.

Now the mayor of Zakrzówek, Józef Potocki of PiS, has announced that his community is suing Staszewski. Potocki says the activist’s description of the village as an “LGBT-free zone” is a “harmful and defamatory…lie suggesting there is discrimination or segregation of people”.

But “nothing like that happens”, says the mayor. Although the village has declared itself “free from LGBT ideology”, and pledged to fight “homopropaganda”, we “welcome everyone – tourists, investors – we have no prejudices against anyone”, he adds, quoted by Wprost.

The village’s case is being financially supported by the Polish League Against Defamation (known in Polish as Reduta Dobrego Imienia). Its president, Świrski, says that Staszewski’s campaign has not only defamed the village, but also harms “Poland’s good name”.

This has a potential financial impact – by discouraging investors and tourists – but also an threatens national security. “If, God forbid, Biden became president of the US” then his belief that there are “LGBT-free zones” could damage one of Poland’s most important military alliances, says Świrski.

In response to the lawsuit, Staszewski says he has nothing to fear because not only is “truth on my side”, but also the law. He notes that a number of court rulings have overturned anti-LGBT resolutions such as Zakrzówek’s.

Judges found that the resolutions violate the constitution, which bans discrimination and requires equal treatment, and ruled that the term “LGBT ideology” is not simply a reference to a set of ideas, as conservative critics claim, but “de facto refers to people from this LGBT group”.

Earlier this year, an NGO ranked Poland as the worst country in the European Union for LGBT people, based on the legal situation and social climate. It cited the anti-LGBT resolutions as one of the factors taken into account.

Main image: Bart Staszewski/Facebook

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.