What Is Happening In Eastern Europe With LGBTQ Rights

Authoritarian strongmen are taking over the former Soviet Block countries and are attacking us. Like Trump the countries of Poland, Hungary, Belarus, and Ukraine are all attacking LGBTQ rights.

LGBT Rights Are Flashpoint in Culture War Dividing Europe’s East and West
Deepening social schism threatens bloc’s unity and collective action as economic stresses mount
Wall Street Journal
By Valentina Pop and Natalia Ojewska
August 18, 2020


TUCHÓW, Poland—Last year, this small Polish town near the eastern edge of the European Union passed a resolution proclaiming itself a “municipality free of LGBT ideology.” In July, the EU responded by stripping funding for a program connecting Tuchów with a sister city in France.

For EU authorities, Tuchów had violated a fundamental right not to be discriminated against based on sexual orientation or gender, something protected in the bloc’s treaties and high-court case law. Some locals here, in a stronghold of Poland’s newly re-elected President Andrzej Duda, don’t see it that way.
[…]
LGBT rights have become a flashpoint in a culture war between Europe’s West, which is becoming broadly more socially liberal, and its East, which hews to more-conservative views. The social schism threatens EU unity and collective action at a time of political and economic stress.

Politicians in countries of the East that were behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War present themselves as defending traditions and Christian values. For many in the West, that approach is at odds with fundamental tenets of Western liberal democracy.

The EU has decided to cut back on funding those countries.

EU officials, pushed by richer and more liberal members including Denmark and the Netherlands, are now seeking to limit funding to countries that flout norms established by the bloc’s earlier members. Fights over financing for reconstruction and recovery from the coronavirus pandemic loom in coming months.

In Poland they thumbed their nose at the EU.

Polish 'LGBT-free' town gets state financing after EU funds cut
Reuters
By Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz and Joanna Plucinska
August 18, 2020


The ruling nationalists’ position against gay rights has become a flash-point in a culture war pitting the religious right against more liberal-minded Poles.

Critics, including the European Union, have accused the Law and Justice (PiS) government of backtracking on womens’ and LGBT rights and running a campaign laced with homophobic rhetoric in the run-up to last month’s presidential election.

“We are supporting a municipality that has a pro-family agenda, promotes support for well-functioning families, and fights against the imposed ideology of LGBT and gender, which is being pushed by the European Commission,” Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro told a news conference.

The town of Tuchow in southern Poland will now receive 250,000 zlotys ($67,800) from the ministry’s Justice Fund.

The Germany newspaper Deutsche Welle had this to say about the unrest in Poland.

Poland: LGBT+ activists and nationalists face off
Gay rights are increasingly under threat in Poland, endorsed by the government. Far-right nationalists arranged a "stop aggression by LGBT" rally in Warsaw, prompting supporters of the LGBT+ community to confront them.
Deutsche Welle
August 16, 2020


Hundreds of Polish nationalists and defenders of gay rights faced off in central Warsaw on Sunday, amid a deteriorating situation for the country's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT+) community.

Both groups shouted abuse at each other in front of Warsaw University's main gate. A line of police officers separated them.

The nationalists burnt a rainbow flag — the symbol of LGBT+ social movements, while the LGBT+ demonstrators and supporters painted one on the street.


Recently, 48 gay-rights activists and supporters were detained after protesting the arrest of an activist — accused of hanging rainbow flags over statues in Warsaw.

Gay rights was a divisive issue in the recent presidential election campaign. Incumbent president, Andrzej Duda – an ally of the ruling far-right Law and Justice Party (PiS) — compared what he called LGBT "ideology" to communist doctrine during his campaign, sparking criticism.
[…]
Far-right nationalist movement All-Poland Youth arranged Sunday's demonstration under the banner "stop aggression by LGBT."
[…]
Members of nationalist groups the National Movement and the March of Independence also participated.

Rolling back freedoms

PiS has embarked on a program of rolling back liberal freedoms — particularly for women and the LGBT+ community.

During the coronavirus lockdown, women protested against the proposed tightening of already-strict abortion laws.

These are all out of Trump’s playbook and that of the radical right-wing Christians organizations and the strongmen of Eastern Europe listened and took notes.

The Southern Poverty Law Center had this to say about Eastern Europe; “In 2007, he [Scott Lively] co-founded the virulently anti-gay Watchmen on the Walls, an organization currently active more in Eastern Europe than the U.S. More recently…”

Their hate is spreading…

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In Forbes…

• Increasingly divisive politics and rising right-wing groups are stoking a growth in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric across eastern Europe, according to leading human rights agencies, and warn of a backlash against gay rights in the region.
• Hungary’s far-right government outlawed modifying the listed gender on official papers in late May, a move activists say scales back the rights that the transgender community has won over the past two decades.

In another article in Forbes…

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), part of the Council of Europe, renewed a call it made in 2017 for Ukraine to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.

“Unless you insert it in criminal code, police will not look for that as a motive for hatred or discrimination,” Maria Daniella Marouda, chairwoman of the ECRI told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.
[…]
“It can be a backlash in rhetoric, in hate speech, in hate crimes, in violence against LGBTI issues,” said Marouda, a Greek academic. “This is happening all over Europe.”

The ECRI also urged Albania to recognise same-sex partnerships and let trans people legally change their gender on official documents so that it matches their appearance, to protect them from harassment.

Several senior Albanian officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Same-sex marriage is not legal in the socially-conservative Balkan country.

I believe that these attacks on our rights is a result of increasing social/economic pressures as the middle class is squeezed the middle class is looking who to blame and their hate is being focused on us as the root of the social economic stress.

Does this sound like something out of 1930s Europe?

One player has kept quite.

The Roman Catholic Church, these Eastern European countries are mostly Catholic and in some of the countries the church is supporting the hate and discrimination and in other countries they are quite to the hate and persecution.