Ahead of parliamentary elections this autumn, the Law and Justice party has thrown the full weight of its party apparatus behind a campaign that is marginalising Poland’s LGBT+ community, its critics say.
The party’s new focus on countering what its officials call Western “LGBT ideology” has largely replaced its prior rallying cries against migrants, said Michal Bilewicz, a researcher at the University of Warsaw who tracks the prevalence of prejudices against minorities in public discourse.
In 2015, anti-migrant rhetoric helped the right-wing populist party come to power, according to data gathered by Mr Bilewicz.
But even at the height of Europe’s surge, Poland never saw many non-European migrants, and public attention became more difficult to sustain once the flow to the continent diminished. [...]
Paweł Jabłoński, an adviser to Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, noted that the “LGBT-free” declarations had “no actual meaning in terms of regulations”.[...]
With their remarks “on the margins of hate speech,” said Adam Bodnar, Poland’s independent commissioner for human rights, “the government is increasing homophobic sentiments.”
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