Poland's "anti-lgbt" Zones

RowanB

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Inside Poland’s 'LGBT-free zones'


I only just became aware of this and I can't help but feel sad and angry that this is even possible in this day and age.

Just thought I'd share the article for those who are interested
 
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Klingsor

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These people are insane. Or, perhaps more likely, cynically manipulative:

"Communists used to wave the red flag and told people they were fighting for the poor, for the workers, for the peasants," he says. "Now these activists hold up the rainbow flag and say they are fighting for sexual minorities. It was not true and it is not true. And since we lived through communist times we have a duty to tell others how dangerous such ideas can be.

"However far-fetched Sakiewicz's ideas may seem, they are echoed by senior politicians and figures in Poland's influential Catholic Church. In a campaign speech when he stood for re-election, President Andrzej Duda called the promotion of LGBT rights an ideology "even more destructive" than communism. The Archbishop of Krakow recently warned of a neo-Marxist "rainbow plague".
 
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RowanB

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Just dont understand why we cant all just leave eachother the fuck alone and mind our own business.

Because your imaginary friend in the sky said its bad? And that gives you the right to dictate the lives of others? Did daddy not hug you enough?

I live in England, where things are obviously much better, but i grew up in a time where things were much harder and have suffered personally because of homophobia, discrimination, bigotry and general assholetry (trademarking that...), and seeing something like this hit hard.

We've fought so hard just to have basic respect and human rights and now those poor people are are going through so much awful shit thats out of their control.

The human race must be the worst thing to have happened to this universe.
 
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Ditto81

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Just dont understand why we cant all just leave eachother the fuck alone and mind our own business.

Because your imaginary friend in the sky said its bad? And that gives you the right to dictate the lives of others? Did daddy not hug you enough?

I live in England, where things are obviously much better, but i grew up in a time where things were much harder and have suffered personally because of homophobia, discrimination, bigotry and general assholetry (trademarking that...), and seeing something like this hit hard.

We've fought so hard just to have basic respect and human rights and now those poor people are are going through so much awful shit thats out of their control.

The human race must be the worst thing to have happened to this universe.


It's too easy to rag on Religion, especially when the Soviet Union were staunch Atheists and Homosexuality there remained illegal until the late 80s when it fell. So you can't blame a "sky wizard" as you put it to people who weren't religious at all persecuting gays also.
 

Industrialsize

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It's too easy to rag on Religion, especially when the Soviet Union were staunch Atheists and Homosexuality there remained illegal until the late 80s when it fell. So you can't blame a "sky wizard" as you put it to people who weren't religious at all persecuting gays also.
Poland's government is leading a Catholic revival. It has minorities and liberals worried
Foreign Correspondent
/
By Eric Campbell

Posted MonMonday 27 AprApril 2020 at 2:38pm, updated TueTuesday 28 AprApril 2020 at 11:42pm
I'm in downtown Warsaw in the middle of Europe's biggest far-right rally and it's messing with my mind.

The weird part isn't the souvenir stands selling anti-Muslim t-shirts or the angry young men wearing skull masks and chanting "faggots forbidden".

That's standard for an ultranationalist rally.

What's really jarring is the sight of priests standing behind them clutching rosaries.

Then there are the old ladies singing songs about bashing Marxists and the young families who've brought their babies out in prams to celebrate the parade.
In Poland, ultranationalists aren't just obsessed with white civilisation and getting rid of foreigners.

They're also big on Catholic family values and determined to stamp out what they see as decadent Western liberalism.

"You know what Marxists and Lefties are afraid of?" far-right leader Robert Bakiewicz shouts to the crowd of 60,000.

"They are afraid of this," he says, holding up a crucifix and kissing it.
It's a modern European nation. But one third of the country has been declared 'LGBT free'
 

RowanB

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It's too easy to rag on Religion, especially when the Soviet Union were staunch Atheists and Homosexuality there remained illegal until the late 80s when it fell. So you can't blame a "sky wizard" as you put it to people who weren't religious at all persecuting gays also.

No, sorry, i don't mean to generalise or insinuate that all religious people share these opinions.

Its only because the article speaks of the church influence here and there's a religious undertone to many of the statements made in many articles.

It is my strong belief that church and state should *not* mix. Period. One persons belief system is no more special than anothers.

There are many other parts of the article that have me equally infuriated. The insinuation that we're pedophiles or that we influence and confuse children to live abnormal lives. Such archaic, ignorant and hateful opinions held by those who are meant to serve the people.
 

Industrialsize

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Is Poland a Catholic Theocracy?
It was a narrow race in Poland, but the incumbent President Andrzej Duda beat challenger Rafał Trzaskowski in Sunday’s presidential vote, winning 51.2 percent of the vote. His election is part of a crucial trend: the rise of church-state cooperation in Europe.

“Many priests and bishops have agreed to a deal with the current world leaders,” deutschlandfunk.de noted. “They support the conservative nationalist PiS [Law and Justice] government from the pulpit and in many other ways. In return, PiS ensures them money and influence. In hardly any other EU country are the state and church as closely connected as in Poland” (Trumpet translation throughout).

“Every good Pole should know what the role of the church is … because beyond the church there is only nihilism,” stated PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński.

Kaczyński is seen as the puppet master behind Poland’s government. Through Duda, Kaczyński rules the country in a close alliance with the Catholic Church. Kaczyński has shaped PiS policies like no one else and has slowly formed Poland into a state dominated by Catholic edicts. Anna Grzymała-Busse, a political scientist, currently at Stanford University, wrote for Concilium Civitas

Is Poland a Catholic Theocracy?
 
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keenobserver

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It's too easy to rag on Religion, especially when the Soviet Union were staunch Atheists and Homosexuality there remained illegal until the late 80s when it fell. So you can't blame a "sky wizard" as you put it to people who weren't religious at all persecuting gays also.

The Russian Orthodox Church has been consistent. At times persecuted the church has been expanding since Gorbachev and is endorsed by Putin, and the anti-gay crusade has his full blessing - always has.
 

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Hi, can I just jump in here and make a few things clearer in this moral panic. I have a little experience of the subject and of Poles.

What you need to understand about Poland is that while it is an old nation, it is a new country. Poland didn't exist for some hundreds of years before being blinked into existence by the Treaty of Versailles in 1920. It lasted less than two decades before being swallowed and brutally eaten by both the Nazis and the Soviets. The country was destroyed twice over and after WWII the newly reconstituted Poland was forcibly converted to communism behind the Iron Curtain and all signs of Polish nationhood subsumed for 45 years.

Poland has only got its self determination back since 1989. Before then, the Soviet-backed government told people how to think, rejected Church influence and tolerated no dissent. There has had a long route through economic revival and joining the EU. It is in these terms still finding its way and its institutions and political life are young. And a long shadow is cast over the Polish psyche by Poland's larger neighbours, Germany and Russia, both of whom have fucked badly with Poland in the last century.

So what's all this to do with gay people in Poland?

The phenomenon we're dealing with here is a revived Polish nationalism, as typified by the Law and Justice (amusingly acronym: PiS) Party. They seek to build a strong Polish nation to rebuild national pride based on Polish values, ie family, community and Catholicism.

Against this background, the anti-LGBT lobby sits squarely within this narrative and maintains (bizarrely) that pro-LGBT activists are foreign, corrosive to the family/traditional values and more dangerous than communism.

This is not the case across all Poland but you should further understand that this intolerance of homosexuality runs deep in Eastern Europe/former Soviet Bloc - from Poland to Russia to the Balkans - as does nationalism.

Doesn't make it right, I'm just saying where this stems from.
 

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I am vocal about boycotting any society that victimizes any of its citizens out of ignorance and hatred.

Because the Catholic church says nothing, just as it did in Germany and Austria during the time of Hitler, I would advocate refusing to help any of its charities here in the USA.

Prior to Covid, my sons had wanted to do a Eurail tour of Europe. Because they could not visit everything, they had to eliminate some places that would have been otherwise of interest to them. They wanted to be socially responsible about their choices and where they spend their tourist dollars. When planning their trip, they consulted with local activists to see which countries had solid rights records and which did not. Poland and Hungary were dropped from the itinerary immediately.
 

BZPrem

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As someone who lives amongst all this chaos that is happening now in Poland, I am quite sad that my country is going back in development.

In Poland there has been created a term 'LGBT ideology', that stands for all the equal rights for all the LGBT community. While there is more and more hatred towards LGBT people, everyone seems to forget that we actually are people and we do have feelings. Even though I am just an average citizen, just wanting to feel free in my country, I am marked as someone whose only purpose in life is to threaten the 'normal' people, threaten the family, whatever that means.

Our ruling party's right now is only trying to get people to vote for them and their electorate are people who don't have any education and elderly community. And right now, they basically don't have any stops to get what they want. The news on national television is so trash, it's below any level of decency. On one internet site there is a guy who watches it every day and awards sections with Goebbels Award (the propaganda chief in the Third Reich) and there are some awards every day. During presidential campaign, the news was a one big campaign for the current president and mixing the opposition cadidates with mud. Also, there was no world news almost at all during the presidential campaign.

As an another example, there was a movie that was made with public money (from taxes and so on) in national television about LGBT that was supposed to expose all the dirty secrets about LGBT community. The literal translation of a title is: "The invasion of LGBT". I don't even own a TV, because I use the internet for everything, but there is still a huge number of people for whom the TV is the main source of information.

The level of knowledge people have that establish these 'LGBT-free zones' is also quite a phenomenon. There was this viral video from the council meeting of one of the small towns that got quite a bad reputation (they establish anti-lgbt zone, anti-5G zone and anti WiFi-zone), where the head of the council is asked to tell everyone that is there what LGBT shortcut stands for and he said "Gays, Lesbians, Bio, someThing" (geje, lesbijki, bio, coś Tam). While it's funny and what not, it's actually painful as well.

In general, I am not into politics at all, but the current situation really forces everybody to be up to date all the time, seeing how more crazy our establishment can get. For me it's just a matter of time to leave my country and find my place somewhere else.

OTYwL3VfMS9jY182MTVkZi9wLzIwMTkvMTAvMTAvMTE4MC81NDEvYzNmNzZlN2M3Y2UwNGY2MTg4Mzg5YjY2MDkwYjE4ZGQuanBlZw==.jpeg
 

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As someone who lives amongst all this chaos that is happening now in Poland, I am quite sad that my country is going back in development.

In Poland there has been created a term 'LGBT ideology', that stands for all the equal rights for all the LGBT community. While there is more and more hatred towards LGBT people, everyone seems to forget that we actually are people and we do have feelings. Even though I am just an average citizen, just wanting to feel free in my country, I am marked as someone whose only purpose in life is to threaten the 'normal' people, threaten the family, whatever that means.

Our ruling party's right now is only trying to get people to vote for them and their electorate are people who don't have any education and elderly community. And right now, they basically don't have any stops to get what they want. The news on national television is so trash, it's below any level of decency. On one internet site there is a guy who watches it every day and awards sections with Goebbels Award (the propaganda chief in the Third Reich) and there are some awards every day. During presidential campaign, the news was a one big campaign for the current president and mixing the opposition cadidates with mud. Also, there was no world news almost at all during the presidential campaign.

As an another example, there was a movie that was made with public money (from taxes and so on) in national television about LGBT that was supposed to expose all the dirty secrets about LGBT community. The literal translation of a title is: "The invasion of LGBT". I don't even own a TV, because I use the internet for everything, but there is still a huge number of people for whom the TV is the main source of information.

The level of knowledge people have that establish these 'LGBT-free zones' is also quite a phenomenon. There was this viral video from the council meeting of one of the small towns that got quite a bad reputation (they establish anti-lgbt zone, anti-5G zone and anti WiFi-zone), where the head of the council is asked to tell everyone that is there what LGBT shortcut stands for and he said "Gays, Lesbians, Bio, someThing" (geje, lesbijki, bio, coś Tam). While it's funny and what not, it's actually painful as well.

In general, I am not into politics at all, but the current situation really forces everybody to be up to date all the time, seeing how more crazy our establishment can get. For me it's just a matter of time to leave my country and find my place somewhere else.

OTYwL3VfMS9jY182MTVkZi9wLzIwMTkvMTAvMTAvMTE4MC81NDEvYzNmNzZlN2M3Y2UwNGY2MTg4Mzg5YjY2MDkwYjE4ZGQuanBlZw==.jpeg
It's sad for me to watch. All of my grandparents are from Dąbrowa Białostocka.
 

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It's sad for me to watch. All of my grandparents are from Dąbrowa Białostocka.
Well, they seem to have made a good decision, haven't they?

I am from Krakow, which kind of in the middle of PiS (the ruling party) supporters region (south/east Poland). Of course, it's the bigger city, so it's more progressive, however I have never seen two guys holding hands in public and I wouldn't do it myself. The number of weird looks would be too much and if you went unlucky, you could end up beaten up by the defenders of the normality, good and merciful catholics that follow teachings of Jesus. Sometimes you can see two girls walking holding hands, because it's more accepted (you don't really know, they just can be friends).

The archbishop of Krakow, Marek Jedraszewski, also called us a "LGBT plague" as if we were some kind of virus that wants to penetrate every aspect of life. I am not religious at all, so I don't really give a damn, but in general, LGBT people were pretty upset by it. The pope is actually considered 'too leftwing' for the true polish catholics, by some at least. I remember that there was a meeting of gay-kids parents with Pope and more 'extreme' people here were shocked why he would do that.

Honestly, if you know anything about the style of our politics, you can easily see that LGBT is really a decoy to provide controversy and hide the real problems our country needs to face. It's a shame that it is done at the cost of us...
 

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Ultimately, when it comes down to it, Poland is an orthodox Catholic dominated society, and therefore, extremely homophobic. Despite it's history of fighting for "Solidarity" and human rights, against the worst imaginable adversaries, such as the Nazi's and Stalinists, Poland will continue to tow the Pope's line as a homophobic Catholic nation.

Good luck to you living there, who continue to fight for your freedom to be the genuine person that you are!

A/B
 

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Poland will continue to tow the Pope's line as a homophobic Catholic nation.

Thank you for the kind words, they mean a lot, but you probably don't follow what is going on, so I wanted to add some things.
Recently, there was a trailer of a documentary of pope Francis, where he makes a statement that same-sex relationships should be protected.
Pope Francis, in Shift for Church, Voices Support for Same-Sex Civil Unions

Of course, ever since he has been elected a new Pope, he isn't exactly the Polish nation favourite. "We" just think he is too left-wing. I, half laughing, expect a new schism, where the New Great Polish Church will be created with our beloved leader Jarosław Kaczyński as a head of the church (just like the Queen is the head of English church).

Good luck to you living there
Honestly, I'm pretty sure I leave the country as soon as I am done with my college. Really, no point staying where you are not wanted and on every step you are reminded how wrong is the way you didn't choose to live.
 
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ActionBuddy

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Thank you for the kind words, they mean a lot, but you probably don't follow what is going on, so I wanted to add some things.
Recently, there was a trailer of a documentary of pope Francis, where he makes a statement that same-sex relationships should be protected.
Pope Francis, in Shift for Church, Voices Support for Same-Sex Civil Unions

Of course, ever since he has been elected a new Pope, he isn't exactly the Polish nation favourite. "We" just think he is too left-wing. I, half laughing, expect a new schism, where the New Great Polish Church will be created with our beloved leader Jarosław Kaczyński as a head of the church (just like the Queen is the head of English church).


Honestly, I'm pretty sure I leave the country as soon as I am done with my college. Really, no point staying where you are not wanted and on every step you are reminded how wrong is the way you didn't choose to live.

I do pay attention to the news of your country, @BZPrem, and I am worried by it. You live in a scary situation, no matter what the "Pope" has to say, temporarily, today.

I hope for the best future for our brave, openly gay, lesbian, bi, and trans people living there!

A/B
 
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