Poland remains the worst country in the European Union for LGBT people, according to the latest “Rainbow Europe” ranking produced by ILGA-Europe, a Brussels-based NGO that advocates for LGBT rights.
In the previous version of the index, which takes into account both LGBT people’s legal situation and the “social climate” they face, Poland fell below Latvia into bottom place in the EU, following a concerted anti-LGBT campaign led by the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.
This year, Poland’s score has fallen further, from 16% to 13%, though it remains 42nd out of 49 European countries in total, with only non-EU states such as Belarus (12%), Russia (10%) and Turkey (4%) lower. The ranking is topped by Malta (94%), Belgium (74%) and Luxembourg (72%).
ILGA-Europe notes in its country report on Poland that “the hate campaign against the LGBTI community” has continued, and that it became a central theme at last year’s presidential election, when incumbent Andrzej Duda “degraded and scapegoated the LGBTI community on his way to victory”.
During his campaign, President Duda condemned LGBT as an “ideology of evil” and promised to “defend children” from it as well as to introduce a constitutional amendment banning adoption by same-sex couples.
PiS, which supported Duda’s candidacy, presented the election as a “choice between the white-and-red Poland” of Duda, a reference to the national colours, “and a rainbow Poland”, because the main opposition candidate supported LGBT rights.
The Rainbow Europe report also highlights that 2020 saw more local authorities adopt resolutions opposing “LGBT ideology”. ILGA-Europe, however, wrongly says that some have declared themselves “LGBT-free zones” – a term that does not appear in any of the resolutions.
It also noted that the new education minister, Przemysław Czarnek, who was appointed last autumn, has said that LGBT “people are not equal to normal people” so we should “stop listening to this idiocy about human rights or equality”. Czarnek has also likened “LGBT ideology” to Nazism.
ILGA-Europe claimed that there is “a climate of fear and state harassment” against LGBT activists. It pointed to the arrest and detention of Margot Szutowicz, an activist charged with attacking a truck displaying homophobic messages.
Over 170 academics – including from Harvard, Oxford and the Sorbonne – have called for an international boycott of Poland's "homophobic, xenophobic and misogynistic" education minister.
He has said that "LGBT ideology comes from the same roots as Nazism" https://t.co/uviFzYCSai
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) December 29, 2020
It noted that the treatment of Szutowicz and other LGBT activists has been criticised by Poland’s National Preventive Mechanism Against Torture, the European Parliament LGBTI Intergroup and the Council of Europe. The CoE’s human rights commissioner, Dunja Mijatović, issued a memorandum on the “stigmatisation of LGBTI people in Poland”.
PiS argues that it is not opposed to LGBT people themselves, but to “LGBT ideology”, which it presents as a dangerous set of ideas being imported to Poland from the West that threatens Polish culture, identity and even the nation itself.
“LGBT ideology” has “begun to dominate the world”, “weakening the west” and “terrorising people”, says PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński, who warns that Poland must be prevented from following that path.
Main image credit: ILGAEurope/Twitter
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.
