This article was originally published on the Coda Story disinformation channel.
Justyna Szpanowska was cycling around Warsaw in mid-August when she heard what first looked like a public protection announcement about the coronavirus.
As he got closer to his source, he learned that it was nothing of the kind. As a result of the noise, he came through a truck that was driving slowly down a busy downtown street. His back was covered by loudspeakers broadcasting a prerecorded message, caution. bystanders that same-sex couples are committing pedophilia as opposed to babies.
In the passenger seat, a blogger from the ultra-conservative LGBT hate organization “Fundacja Pro – Prawo do Oycia” (Pro Foundation for the Right to Life), holding a camera.
Szpanowska, a left-wing party activist Razem (Left Together), said about a hundred more people had piled up near the vehicle to express outrage at his message. “I’m sure you’re looking to galvanize a crowd reaction for infotainment, ” he said.
Since its 2015 election victory, Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party has exploited prejudices opposed to the LGBTQ network for political gain. In the 2019 parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said his victory would save you from “gay marriages. “During the presidential election of the month, President Andrzej Dudza described the concept of LGBTQ rights as “worse than communism. “
Alongside the hatred that opposes queer people, the Polish government has referred to “gender ideology,” a theory of foreign conspiracy that Marxists are conspiring to destroy white nuclear warheads by erasing differences between men and women.
Attacking “imported” sexuality and reproductive rights while promising loyalty to the “traditional family in favor” is what historian Andrea Peto describes as “a nationalist neoconservative reaction to the crisis of the global neoliberal global order. “
The effect was devastating. Over the next year, nearly a hundred local governments, representing a third of Poland’s territory, have declared the thee “LGBT-free zones. “A 2020 report through an education at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruo estimates that the number of homosexuals under the age of 25 trying to kill themselves has increased from 30% in 2016 to 45% by 2020. Kolodziej found that 84% of LGBTQ youth now have suicidal thoughts.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Helena de Cleyre, a 29-year-old trans activist living in Warsaw. Almost every day he hears about attacks on LGBTQ people.
“What I’m basically thinking about is immigration,” De Cleyre said. “I need to be treated like a citizen. I don’t need my neighbors and other people in public to treat me like I’m not a human being. “
In April 2019, the ultra-conservative LGBT hate organization “Fundacja Pro – Prawo do Oycia” (Pro Foundation for the Right to Life) drove a car in the town of Gniezno, a Catholic strongness in western Poland, with a banner to read: The LGBT lobby needs to teach children: masturbation; consent to sexual reports and orgasm. Stop pedophilia. ” Since then, those cars and vans have a not unusual place in major cities.
“This is the ultimate competitive homophobic crusade I’ve ever noticed in my life,” said Katarzyna Warecka, a lawyer for the LGBTQ Organization Tolerated, in the liberal-majority port city of Gdansk.
Last year he tried to sue Fundacja Pro for “spreading false and homophobic content about the alleged link between pedophilia and homosexuality. “However, the court objected. Subsequently, none of the city’s schools, town halls and other public establishments voted against the group.
More recently, other people began to face Fundacja Pro vans directly on the street. On 8 August, non-binary LGBTQ activist Malgorzata Szutowicz was reailed for three weeks for cutting tyres from one of the vehicles. they arrested 48 other people, adding a passerby who had just left a nearby grocery store and carried a shopping bag.
A week after Szutowicz’s arrest, Linus Lewandowski, a 27-year-old software developer, saw a Facebook message in a Fundacja Pro van near his apartment in Warsaw and arrived on the scene in time to see the awning of the huge banner of the swirling van. orange graffiti.
The incident was filmed through Maciej Zemla, a journalist from the right-line television channel wPolsce. pl. Zemla made a call for himself in May 2019 when filming an LGBTQ volleyball occasion without permission and photographs to give the false impression of a gay plot. introduce “erotic contraptions” into schools number one.
Lewandowski is one of 48 other people who were arrested in protests following Szutowicz’s arrest and has since had to report to the local police station twice a week and was accused of being part of a plot to violently attack a property. are “completely false, ” he said.
Lewandowski has reveled firsthand with the deterioration of the climate for LGBTQ communities in Poland. In August, he and her boyfriend were beaten by two strangers, who saw them walk hand in hand. Despite the grim situation, he sees a replacement option and plans to run for Polish parliamentary elections in three years.
While liberal politicians claimed to be “neutral” in the struggles for gay rights, last month an organization of Polish opposition parliamentarians came to parliament dressed in the colors of the rainbow to protest against the openly odious rhetoric of the government. “If the existing government falls,” Lewandowski said, “we will get the rights we fight for.
Anti-LGBTQ campaign
Mariusz Dzierzawski, who founded Fundacja Pro in 2005, describes himself as a Christian “seeker of truth”. Also known as “Poland’s ultimate radical anti-abortion,” the country already has one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe. Since 2015, the organization has focused on criminalizing sex education in schools, with a homophobic crusade called “Stop Pedophilia”.
On its crusade website, Fundacja Pro transmits pseudoscience and incorrect information claiming to link other LGBTQ people and sex education to pedophilia.
The organization bases its many claims on the studies of two American sociologists Mark Regnerus and psychologist Paul Cameron, whose discredited paintings are cited through a wide range of anti-LGBTQ organizations.
Malgorzata Szutowicz is a founding member of the activist organization Queer Stop Bzdurom (Stop the Bullshit). Founded a year ago, its members organized dance events to block Fundacja Pro vans, which some activists call “homophobes,” and booths. has placed rainbow flags and anarchist symbols on statues in Warsaw, which infuriated Poland’s conservative government.
“Sometimes there are three, four or five people,” Szutowicz said. “We did our actions, posted on social media and expected comments. “
Szutowicz and his wife Lania Madej founded the organization after setting up a Fundacja Pro data station, where volunteers distributed leaflets and collected signatures from their law “Stop Pedophilia”.
This bill requires criminal sentences for anyone who teaches sex education to others under the age of 18. known as Tradition, Family and Property.
In June 2019, Helena de Cleyre joined Szutowicz and Madej to protest against a Fundacja Pro booth in poznan city, when they arrived, they were arrested and through police.
“For many years, attempts have been made to legally download the basic rights of other non-heterosexuals in Poland, but this has failed,” de Cleyre said. The local politician says so and more commonly because you don’t have sex education in schools.
As attacks on LGBTQ communities increased, activists faced a new front: the hundred local governments that have signed non-legally binding statutes to declare themselves “free from LGBT ideology. “In July, the European Union announced that it would no longer offer investment to six of Poland’s “LGBT-free” cities.
In September 2019, Helena de Cleyre and some of her friends hit the road under the collective flag of the Queer Tour. His plan was to reach so-called LGBT-free areas, communicate with other local people, and demystify government propaganda.
“It’s hard because you can waste a lot of time visiting to convince a person,” he said of Cleyre. “We go out to say things like, ‘Hi, I’m LGBT, do I seem to be destroying Poland?'” Sometimes it works.
On a recent weekend, Queer Tour visited the city of Debica, in the southeast of the country. After installing their post, police surrounded them and fired them, while the city mayor told them their movements were “illegal. “
Queer Tour and Stop Bzdurom send packs of stickers, comics and books to LGBTQ youth across Poland. Decals say things like “I’m not an ideology” or show prominent characters, adding Jesus Christ, on a rainbow background. Szutowicz’s arrest, the group’s reference printing press, has been afraid to produce curtains for them. “They sent us emails to tell us what we’re doing, but some of our designs are probably too controversial,” Szutowicz said, via Skype.
Szutowicz still faces fees for hanging rainbow flags on Warsaw’s monuments and cutting the tires of the Fundacja Pro van.
In August, Stop Bzdurom earned $80,000 in donations, which they would like to donate to small groups in Poland, but Polish collective financing platform Zrzutka refuses to allow funds to be withdrawn.
I recently spoke via Skype with Szutowicz and his spouse Lu, which is not binary. They had just ordered a pizza and were in a position to go to a party at home.
Szutowicz explained that Stop Bzdurom has been forced to prevent his activities since he and Lu were recently followed by police officers dressed as civilians. “Because of the police investigations that oppose us and the constant harassment, we (Stop Bzdurom) should not take additional action in time,” Szutowicz said.
Meanwhile, foreign activists have called on the EU to Poland’s LGBTQ communities. Last week, activists filed a petition with more than 340,000 signatures, the EU’s fight against homophobic hatred in Poland’s ‘LGBT-free’ areas is not easy. The global motion for All Out equality suggested to EU Equality Commissioner Helena Dallito to denounce discriminatory policies and pass the hate crimes law on Poland’s LGBTQ community.
In a sign of growing foreign fear of LGBTQ remedies, 50 ambassadors to Poland earlier this week wrote an open letter calling on Warsaw to help create “an environment of non-discrimination, tolerance and mutual acceptance. “The ambassadors of the United States and Britain suggested poland “end discrimination, especially on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity. “
Lu, who recently created his own collective to hang rainbow flags around Warsaw and throw paint on homophobic banners in public, was more optimistic. He read a Facebook post he had just won from a stranger, who had written to say, “Thank you, Array . . . When I see the flag, I see that someone is fighting for me. “
The morning after our conversation, Szutowicz texted me to tell me that she and Lu had been assaulted twice after the party. Later that night, she texted me again: Lu had just been attacked through a boy near her house. keys in his hands, so Lu has bruises and swelling,” Szutowicz wrote.
“The scenario is getting worse on many fronts in Poland and disorders are vital to me,” he added. “Then, if the stage gets worse, I have this stupid mindset of “I have to paint harder because it’s not enough. “But many of my friends and I are on a stage where physically you can’t do anything else. “