The rainbow of contention
Poland, 2021.
Brandished by some, burned by others, the rainbow flag has become the symbol of hatred and resistance in Poland. Since 2019, more than a hundred regions and municipalities have declared themselves “LGBT-free zones”, resolutions adopted which no little legal value, but which symbolically aim to exclude “LGBT ideology” from public debate and promote the model traditional of the Polish Catholic family. A major theme of the July 2020 presidential election campaign, which saw the re-election of Andrezj Duda and his conservative Law and Justice party. The president then castigated the defense of LGBT rights as being “more dangerous than communism”. Since the election, intolerance and tensions have continued to rise in Poland: anti-LGBT and anti-abortion activists roam the streets of big cities in trucks shouting their rejection of homosexuals through megaphones. Public protests lead to violent clashes between LGBT activists, ultraconservative groups and the police. This climate has polarized Polish society, revealing a divide between the more liberal west and the conservative east, big cities and rural areas, youth and their elders. But paradoxically, the rainbow, which is displayed as a symbol of resistance in large cities, has strengthened activist communities and put LGBT or trans rights at the heart of debates in the most Catholic country in Europe.