Aleks Szczerbiak is Professor of Politics and Contemporary European Studies at the University of Sussex. Author of Poles Together? The Emergence and Development of Political Parties in Post-communist Poland (Central European University Press, 2001), Poland Within the European Union: New Awkward Partner or New Heart of Europe? (Routledge, 2012), Politicising the Communist Past: The Politics of Truth Revelation in Post-Communist Poland (Routledge 2018)
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The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issue has been one of the main sources of political controversy in Poland over the summer months, and is potentially one of the most important and consequential since the collapse of communism in 1989…..
Framing is the key
In fact, Polish attitudes towards LGBT issues are fairly complex, fluid and not necessarily automatically favourable for the social conservative right. Public opinion can probably best be summarised as: toleration but not affirmation (or even, necessarily, acceptance). For example, an April 2019 survey by the CBOS agency found that the number of respondents who felt homosexuality should not be tolerated had fallen from 41 per cent in April 2001 to only 24 per cent, while the number who said that it was something normal increased from five per cent to 14 per cent over the same period. However, a majority (54 per cent) still felt still that, although homosexuality could be tolerated, it was not something normal. So critical to how the LGBT issue plays out is the way it is framed, and a key element of this is who is seen as the aggressor or the victim.
A good example of the risk that the LGBT issue can pose to Law and Justice came in July when a violent crowd of football hooligans and radical nationalists threw stones and fireworks at participants taking part in the first equality march held in Białystok, an city in the culturally conservative Podlasie region in Eastern Poland. Liberal-left commentators and opposition politicians responded by accusing Law and Justice and the Catholic Church of creating a toxic atmosphere that incited and legitimised violence against the marchers and LGBT community more generally through their attacks on sexual minorities. They cited as an example stickers distributed by the pro-government ‘Gazeta Polska’ newspaper with a crossed-out rainbow symbol that read ‘LGBT-free zone’.
For its part, Law and Justice distanced itself from the stickers, arguing that they failed to distinguish between individual members of sexual minorities and criticisms of the LGBT movement’s political agenda. Moreover, both the ruling party and Church leaders condemned the Białystok violence but countered that anti-clerical rhetoric used by some LGBT activists could also have led to an upsurge in attacks on Polish clergy in recent months. Nonetheless, although a July survey conducted by the IBRiS agency for the Rzeczpospolita newspaper found that while most respondents (34 per cent) felt that nationalists were to blame for the Białystok incidents, the second most popular answer was Law and Justice (28 per cent) followed by the Church (26 per cent), while 24 per cent cited LGBT organisations, 18 per cent the Civic Platform local mayor and only eight per cent the opposition. So although Law and Justice is more comfortable discussing the LGBT issue than the liberal-centrist opposition, raising its salience is potentially a risky strategy for the ruling party which can easily lose control of the narrative and be portrayed as aggressive and intolerant.