“Being gay in Poland is like being in constant war,” say Polish couple Jakub and Dawid, who campaign for better LGBTQ freedoms in the conservative country.
“You still have to fight for your rights, for equality, for love.”
Poland has become a dangerous place for the LGBTQ community in recent years. Attacks have come from all angles: government-led discrimination from the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has sought to portray LGBTQ people as an ‘ideology’, with LGBTQ rights as anathema to traditional Polish values. Social campaigns have been launched against the community, which includes the signing of charters by 100 Polish towns across an area the third of the size of Poland, to declare themselves ‘free from LGBT ideology’. LGBTQ people have also experienced threats at Pride marches, as well as facing limits on everyday life.
Earlier this year, ILGA-Europe ranked the country as the worst in Europe for LGBTQ rights.
And the situation has escalated further as a result of the recent Presidential election. Running for re-election was incumbent President Andrzej Duda, backed by ruling conservative Law and Justice party. The centrepiece of his campaign – just as PiS’s campaign in the October Parliamentary election last year – was anti-LGBTQ attitudes. During the course of the election race, Duda claimed LGBTQ ‘ideology’ was worse than Communism; pledged to prevent LGBTQ topics being taught in schools; and promised that LGBTQ couples would not be able to adopt.
He won the election last Sunday.
But homophobia was also present in other candidates’ campaigns too. Opposition candidate Rafał Trzaskowski of Civic Platform (PO) had been touted in the international press as a ‘progressive’ challenger to Duda’s right-wing politics – but he too rejected some LGBTQ rights to court PiS supporters, including saying he would also not allow LGBTQ couples to adopt.
And in an interview with the Polish press, the wife of presidential candidate Szymon Hołownia, Urszula Brzezińska-Hołownia, said that she did not know any same-sex couples who wanted to get married.
But this is not the case at all, thinks ‘Miłość nie wyklucza’ – or MNW (‘Love does not exclude association’), a Polish NGO that promotes marriage equality. After hearing Brzezińska-Hołownia’s comments, the NGO launched a campaign on Facebook, ‘#poznajmysię’ (Let’s get to know each other), to show that there are same-sex couples who want to marry. Encouraging couples to post their photos along with stories of their relationships on Hołownia’s social media page, or on the MNW page, the group hope the action could finally help bring same-sex couples and the LGBTQ community into the Polish public eye.
“We collected quite a lot of stories,” says co-President of MNW, Hubert Sobecki.
“We call them testimonies.”
A MNW report into the ‘LGBTQIA Community in Poland’ in 2015 found that as many as 87% of same-sex couples would like to get married, and the #poznajmysię campaign is a witness to this. The original MNW post about the action received thousands of reactions and hundreds of comments, the stories showing a snapshot of LGBTQ life in Poland. Some couples said they had given up and wanted to move to a country where they can marry; others said they had married abroad, but this is not recognised in Poland; and some said they are hopeful LGBTQ rights in Poland will eventually change.
But with recent developments, this is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
“The situation is quite complex,” explains Sobecki, speaking before the election result was announced. “LGBT+ people have been targeted by the government, some very high officials in the Catholic Church, and state media, which has been turned into a propaganda machine.
“It’s an explosive mixture – we already see an uptick in cases of violence on the streets.”
And he believes the future may be even worse.
“From Duda,” he says, with a sigh, “we can expect many bad things going on.”
In response to recent discrimination, LGBTQ activists are trying to raise awareness of the daily struggles of the community. YouTubing Polish couple Jakub and Dawid have received international attention in recent months for their trailblazing efforts, which have included distributing homemade rainbow masks to protect against coronavirus, and becoming the first gay couple to star in a Polish TV advert – which was then promptly banned by state broadcaster TVP.
“What we try to do is to let people know us better,” the couple explain. “Our government has created an LGBT Monster. It’s pretty awful – so we just try to explain that it’s not true.
“That’s why we also gave away rainbow masks on the streets – to show people that we are not a disease like we are very often called but we try to help them fight against a real disease.”
After hearing about Brzezińska-Hołownia’s comment regarding same-sex marriage, Jakub and Dawid decided to post on their page about their own wedding.
“We didn’t like her explanation,” the pair recall. “She said she didn’t know anybody from LGBT community who would like to get married so there is no point in changing the law.
“If you don’t know people it doesn’t mean they don’t exist – we expect more wisdom and open-mindedness from someone who wants to be a first lady.”
And though the couple had a happy wedding three years ago in Portugal, they say it was also linked to sadness, with the realisation that “foreign countries treat us better than our homeland.
“The scenery was fantastic – beautiful Madeira Island, fantastic cliffs and blue ocean all around – but we would change it for the worst place in Poland in a second if we could.”
With the election results, same-sex couples are now facing even further discrimination in Poland. According to another LGBTQ activist, Bartosz Staszewski, there have been “disgusting political games” played.
Before the election, he was able to meet with Duda in person to discuss LGBTQ issues. Staszewski brought with him photographs of young LGBTQ people who had died by suicide as a result of discrimination.
“I never had an approach to change Duda’s views on LGBT rights or activism. I also didn’t expect him to apologize,” explains Staszewski. “I met with him just to show the photos of young people who committed suicide and I left them on his golden table telling that I hope he will nightmares with those kids. This is the only purpose I had.”
Staszewski added that the meeting “created a space for the media to speak loudly about PiS and Duda’s homophobia” – he hopes that such coverage will work alongside activism to raise awareness of the LGBTQ community in Poland even further.
“At the same time we have the highest number of pride parades ever – in small and big cities,” he adds, optimistically. “We also observe that more young people come out as LGBT. The more the government is pushing, the more we grow in solidarity.”
And although Sobecki admits MNW “cannot compete with state media,” he sees the group’s work in publicising real-life stories an essential part of their strategy, to combat rising hatred.
“The direction [of the current government] is quite clear – the scapegoating technique has been quite effective so far,” he explains. “Allies are beginning to see that silence is no longer an option.
“It’s the ‘20s again, right?”
Image credit: Benson Kua