On November 30, the Russian Supreme Court declared the "international LGTBI social movement" "extremist." Now anyone considered a member of this group can be persecuted by the authorities. Putin defends that his country is fighting against an alleged Western colonialism that It aims to end Russian culture through the acceptance of sexual and gender diversities.
"They seek to destroy our traditional values and impose their false values (...), which lead directly to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature," the Russian president had already declared in a televised message in which he announced the invasion of Ukraine.
Ideas such as that LGTBI groups are threatening people who want to live in a traditional way, that talking about sexual diversity is a form of indoctrination or that homosexuality endangers the demographic future of Europe are a constant among the ultra-conservative and religious groups that have directed attacks towards LGTBI people.
As we move to the East of the European continent, these types of discourses gain visibility and the rights of the LGTBI community decrease, reaching even members of the Union and causing conflicts with community institutions.
In 2022, the Court of Justice of the EU initiated infringement proceedings against Hungary for a law that prohibits showing LGTBI content to minors under 18 years of age. Shortly after, a similar bill was presented in Romania. Lithuania was sanctioned earlier this year by the European Court of Human Rights after censoring a children's book with homosexual characters.
Anastasia Smirnova, program director at Ilga-Europe, an organization that has made a map of Europe in which the countries with greater legal protection for the LGTBI community appear in green and the most insecure in red, has spoken with La Vanguardia. A new iron curtain seems to be rising on her map, but there are some nuances.
“There are countries like Georgia that appear in yellow, symbolizing correct legislation, but where hate crimes have increased and often go unpunished,” says Anastasia. “On the other hand, in other countries such as Hungary or Poland, which are usually highlighted as the worst examples, public acceptance and activity of LGTBI associations is growing,” she adds.
In recent years, Eastern countries have been the European epicenter of attacks on the LGTBI community. In the 2022 Bucharest Pride march, a person threw gas bombs and in another Romanian city, protesters were showered with eggs by ultra-conservative religious attackers. In October 2021, a Bulgarian presidential candidate participated in an attack on an LGBTI community center in Sofia, beating a staff member and destroying furniture and electronic devices. That same year, the headquarters of the Tbilisi Pride organizers, in Georgia, was ransacked by far-right militants. In Bratislava, an attack on a gay bar claimed the life of a young man in October last year.
Poland set off all the alerts when in 2019 more than 100 localities declared themselves “zones free of LGBTI ideology” and leading the European Commission to initiate an infringement procedure. The increase in hostility against LGTBI people came from the government of the ultra-conservative Law and Justice party, which after eight years in power has just been ousted by the progressive coalition of Donald Tusk.
For sociologist Elżbieta Korolczuk, the Polish case is an example of how a right-wing populist party manages to expand its support by adopting an “anti-gender” discourse. “Viktor Orbán in Hungary or Putin since 2013 have used this type of speech to consolidate their support,” she explains to La Vanguardia. She defends that the alliance between parties and anti-gender movements has been “one of the keys in the spread of hatred against the LGTBI community.”
“In Eastern European countries, homophobia and transphobia have reached higher levels because our democracies are weaker,” says Korolczuk. “In Sweden or Germany, we have seen similar trends but the institutions are much more stable and that has stopped a situation like the one in Poland from reaching us,” adds the sociologist.
The good news is that the European population is becoming more tolerant. In Poland, acceptance of the LGTBI community has reached the highest levels in the last 8 years. But Korolczuk says that this increasingly broad rejection of homophobia is leading right-wing populist parties to change strategy and redirect their discourse towards other issues such as migration: “Now the right is using demands for a progressive gender agenda to promote anti-immigration and Islamophobic policies.”
