Interestingly Poland was one of the first to decriminalise homoexuality and declassify it as as a mental illness. The current paradigm of anti LGBT sentiment seem to be imported from Russia and America. Sure there were home grown bigots, but they became normalised and amplified by what’s going on in the world.
Polish homophobia doesn’t require stimuli from abroad, we’re doing well on our own. When we decriminalised homosexual acts in 1932 it was already decriminalised in then-Bolshevik Russia so I wouldn’t look into historical context that much. If I had to blame any external factors it’d be turning Poland into ethnically homogenous country after WW2. Allies did a real number on us then.
That hasn’t been my experience as the gay son of a Polish man in Australia. My dad was hesitant in 2002 when I first came out, but he eventually got over it. It was when Putin started pushing rhetoric about extremist LGBTIQA+ people that my relationship with my dad took a turn for the dark. He’s obsessed with rainbow fascists and won’t hear a word of my side even though I’m the real human he knows. I ended up having to cut all contact with him, and I hold religious fundamentalist populists responsible.
Anti-LGBT propaganda in the mainstream has been mostly the doing of PiS affiliated media, Catholic Church and teenage edgelords. Say what you will about PiS, they are not pro-Russia, and their homophobia looks tame compared to what was happening in the 90s. While there is some external interference on the fringes, we can be shitty on our own.
