PiS attacks LGBT+ rights in Poland, as elections loom

[Celerity]

Amid simmering social discontent and with the Catholic Church wracked by sex-abuse scandals, Poland’s clerical-nationalist party is exploiting homophobia to drive a wedge into the opposition.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/pis-attacks-lgbt-rights-in-poland

In the run-up to this year’s European and national parliamentary elections, LGBT+ rights are dividing Polish politics. Speaking recently against their extension, the leader of the ruling, right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS), Jarosław Kaczyński, said: “This is not about tolerance. This is about the affirmation of same-sex unions, about their marriage, and their right to adopt children. We want to say it clearly. We are saying No!, especially when it concerns children. Stay away from our children!’

This renewed campaign by PiS against LGBT+ rights was launched in the wake of the recent decision by the mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski—from the main opposition party, Citizens’ Platform (PO)—to sign a declaration protecting LGBT+ rights in the capital. The declaration guarantees the basic needs of Warsaw’s LGBT+ community and commits the local government to delivering such things as hostels, a crisis-intervention system and anti-discrimination education in schools.

The conservative right has responded by whipping up an atmosphere of homophobia and hostility towards the LGBT+ community. The public media (and those parts of the private media sympathetic to PiS) have engaged in a barrage of propaganda against the LGBT+ community. Demonstrations have been organised by the conservative and nationalist right outside the Warsaw local-government offices, in protest against the declaration, and banners with homophobic slogans have been displayed in football stadia.

‘Dangerous diseases’

The tactic of finding an enemy, against whom its supporters can unite, has been deployed before by PiS. During the 2015 parliamentary elections, the party ran a strongly negative campaign against refugees, with Kaczyński spreading fear that asylum-seekers could carry ‘very dangerous diseases long absent from Europe’ and that Poland might be forced to resettle more than 100,000 Muslims in the country. PiS argued that it was defending Poland against an attempt by the European Union to impose multicultural values and lifestyles upon it.

The party tried to repeat this strategy during last year’s local election campaigns, contending that PO would allow a wave of refugees to come into those areas where it won power. This negative propaganda resulted in a sharp increase in the number of those opposing Poland taking in refugees.

Such rhetoric is now being repeated against LGBT+ rights, with the conservative and nationalist right maintaining that they are protecting the traditional Polish family and values. A leading PiS candidate in the European elections has said: ‘I think that Poland will be a region free from LGBT. I hope so.’ Some on the right have even absurdly argued that Muslims and the LGBT+ community represent a combined threat: the editor of the right-wing weekly DoRzeczy has claimed that the west faces the choice between becoming a ‘caliphate or a homoland’.

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