The Washington Post

Being a public figure,

and gay and quite outspoken about gay issues,
frankly, I think it’s not really safe to be in Warsaw anymore

Jacek Dehnel

We’ve decided to move out,
but it’s not easy,
it’s not pleasant,
and it’s not something I was looking for

Jacek Dehnel

...when you get on the bus, and someone calls you a faggot, queer or a whore.
I guess that people felt that they were allowed to do it...

Karol

Poland’s ‘LGBT-free zones’ energize some activists, prompt others to leave

BERLIN — When he took up a year-long writing residency in Berlin this year, novelist Jacek Dehnel judged the chances he would return to Poland afterward as 50-50.

His home country already did not feel like a place where one could live comfortably as a gay man. More than 100 towns and cities had passed resolutions declaring themselves free of LGBT “ideology.”

While Pope Francis has called for civil union laws, staunchly Catholic Poland does not recognize civil unions nor Dehnel’s overseas marriage to his husband.

While Dehnel has been in Berlin, things have gotten only more difficult for Poland’s LGBT community. Anti-gay rhetoric from the ruling Law and Justice party — alongside Catholic Church leaders in Poland and state-controlled media — has intensified. President Andrzej Duda has described the push for gay rights as “even more destructive” than communism. A politician who called LGBT people “not equal to normal people” is serving as education minister.

Dehnel and his husband are among those who decided they could no longer call Poland home. More than a dozen of their friends and acquaintances are in various stages of leaving, as well. The fear is that gay rights in Poland are slipping in the direction of notoriously anti-LGBT Russia.

Poland’s ‘LGBT-free zones’

energize some activists

prompt others to leave

Poland’s ‘LGBT-free zones’ energize some activists, prompt others to leave

Article by Loveday Morris