Persecution brings LGBT exodus
WARSAW — When a rightwing populist party won the right to govern Poland five years ago, Piotr Grabarczyk feared “bad things” might happen to gay men like him and other LGBT people. He sometimes considered leaving the country, but waited.
Friends and a job bound Grabarczyk to Warsaw, the relatively liberal capital city. He trusted that Poland’s membership in the European Union would protect his community. Yet his dwindling faith finally fell away as President Andrzej Duda campaigned for reelection on an antiLGBT platform — and won.
Duda, who repeatedly described the LGBT rights movement as a dangerous “ideology,” was sworn into his second term Thursday. Grabarczyk, 31, is now gone, along with other gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Poles who have emigrated to escape what they consider homophobia promoted by the highest levels of government.
“Like where’s the line? Is there a line they are not going to cross? I don’t know,” Grabarczyk said after landing last week in Barcelona, Spain, where both samesex marriages and adoptions are legal.
“That was kind of scary.”
He spoke alongside his boyfriend, Kamil Pawlik, 34, who left Poland three days after Duda beat Warsaw’s mayor in a runoff last month.
While gays and lesbians have never had the legal right to marry or to form civil unions in Poland, as they can in much of Europe, many felt confident until not long ago that Polish society was becoming more accepting and that those rights would one day come.
They have instead faced a furious backlash from the Catholic Church and the government. Duda proposed a constitutional amendment to prevent samesex couples from adopting children. Last year, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Krakow warned of a “rainbow plague,” and the ruling Law and Justice party has described LGBT rights as a threat to families and Poland’s Catholic identity.
No statistics exist on how many LGBT people have left Poland. Activists say some departed after Law and Justice and Duda, who is backed by the party, came to power in 2015 and created an unfriendly climate for liberals and minorities.
As Duda faced a tough electoral challenge from Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, the rhetoric grew harsher. He called the LGBT movement an “ideology” worse than communism and declared that LGBT was “not people.” He formally proposed the samesex adoption ban.
After his victory, Duda apologized for language he acknowledged was sometimes too “harsh.” A prominent LGBT activist, Bart Staszewki, nevertheless asked on Facebook if anyone was thinking of moving away from Poland. He received hundreds of replies, mostly from people saying they were contemplating it or had already left.