LGBT+ rights in Poland: 'We are patient, but our patience has its limits'
Warsaw – As Poland prepares to go to the polls in the second round of the presidential election on Sunday, filmmaker and activist Bartosz Staszewski, a leading figure in the country's LGBT+ movement, looks back on difficult years under the previous right-wing government, but says that change is under way in Polish society.
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I think one of the most visible signs of change is that liberal candidates no longer hesitate to make LGBT+ rights a topic of discussion during the presidential election period. Most of them support the introduction of a civil union, and even the rights of trans people. This is a real change.
During the last presidential elections, these subjects were taboo, nobody mentioned them. But during the eight years that the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party was in power, the more the government tried to oppress us, the more we fought back – with, for example, Pride marches, which were never as numerous in Poland as they were at that time. In a way, this spurred us on and pushed the community to act, to get organised and show solidarity.
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It was a difficult period. All public funding for progressive NGOs was cut. From 2019 onwards, there started to be visible propaganda against us and LGBT+ people became scapegoats. This propaganda was particularly dehumanising, with commentators on prime time TV at 7pm publicly saying that we were Poland's enemies.
This was also the period when the so-called "LGBT-free zones" came into being. Nearly 48 municipalities signed an "anti-LGBT ideology" resolution. After a long battle, the courts gradually declared these zones illegal, and the last of them was abolished last week.
The last eight years have been very hard for me, I've been constantly fighting for the LGBT+ cause. I was prepared for something bad to happen to me. I regularly received death threats, some of them quite serious, and when I reported them to the police they did nothing.
A year and a half ago, when Donald Tusk's Civic Coalition won the election, I said to myself, what do we do now? I wasn't really mentally prepared for that, but it was still a relief.
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We are patient, but our patience has its limits. At the moment, the government cannot pass progressive legislation because of the right of veto held by President Andrzej Duda, who is part of the PiS party.
But if the Civic Coalition candidate, Rafal Trzaskowski, is elected [as the new president], passing laws that the PiS rejects shouldn't be a problem. It's time to turn the page on PiS.
In the big cities, it's a lot safer than it was 10 years ago – progress has been made. Personally, I'm part of that "lost generation" who will probably never really feel safe after experiencing being attacked by hooligans in the street. But nowadays, from time to time, I see young people who are not afraid and who walk hand in hand in big cities like Warsaw, Krakow or Gdansk.
I think the Pride marches have been very useful, because they have helped to normalise the existence of gay people within the population – and that's also thanks to the activists who are doing a fantastic job.
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So do you feel that attitudes are changing in Poland?
Yes, I do. And I think that's the way forward. That's also why politicians are increasingly open to supporting this cause. They can see that society is changing. It's still difficult to be gay in Poland, because we have very few rights: there's no civil union, no marriage equality, no law to protect us from hate speech – and it's even worse for trans people. But on the other hand, polls also show that Poles are increasingly tolerant.
This article was adapted from the original version in French.
