Poland’s Last “LGBT-Free Zone” Officially Repealed
Łańcut repealed a 2019 "family charter" declaring it "free from LGBT ideology" in response to a threat of losing local funding.
The last local authority in Poland with an “LGBT-free zone” resolution has repealed the measure.
Advocates are hailing the move as a significant victory.
The repeal marks a reversal from just a few years ago, when nearly 100 localities, representing one-third of the country’s area, passed laws either directly or indirectly encouraging the exclusion of LGBTQ people from society.
Some of those localities passed “family charters” emphasizing that marriage is restricted for opposite-sex couples.
Other cities or voivodeships (provinces) declared themselves “free from LGBT ideology,” seeking to prohibit the dissemination of information that depicts LGBTQ identity or relationships as normal or promotes LGBTQ rights, legal protections, or visibility.
Former U.S. President Joe Biden and other Western leaders were immensely critical of such laws, seeing them as an attack on human rights and the dignity of LGBTQ people.
Last week, council members in the county of Łańcut, in southeast Poland, held a special session to repeal a “charter of family rights” that was passed in 2019. Thirteen of the 18 council members voted for repeal, reports Notes from Poland.
However, the council members also made clear that the reason they voted for repeal was due to financial reasons, including the potential loss of 750,000 zloty ($200,000) in funding from the county’s sole medical center.
“Despite the fact that the Local Government Charter of Family Rights is not illegal, however, taking into account the circumstances, the Łańcut County Board is of the opinion that it is not possible to exclude the over eighty thousand-strong community of Łańcut County by depriving them of participation and benefits resulting from participation in many programs and grants awarded by government institutions,” the council wrote. “The adopted resolution is therefore aimed solely at counteracting the exclusion of residents of Łańcut County.”
The council also complained about the way the charter of family rights was portrayed in the media as “anti-LGBT,” despite never explicitly mentioning the LGBTQ community.
The council also argued that the country’s Commissioner for Human Rights never expressed any problems or issues with the resolution — though it should be noted that both the current and former commissioners were appointed by the Polish Parliament, which was controlled, until recently, by the right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS).
That party, like many of its right-wing counterparts around the world, has urged localities to pass such ordinances under the guise of “protecting children” and frequently uses LGBTQ identity as a wedge issue in political campaigns.
In July 2021, the European Commission launched legal proceedings against Poland due to its “LGBT-free” resolutions, arguing that the statutes likely violated EU law by discriminating against people based on sexual orientation. Soon after, the European Union froze funding for Polish regions that had passed such laws.
Separately, the EEA and Norway Grants program, which is distinct from the EU and provides funds to Polish local authorities, announced it would not finance projects run by governments with anti-LGBTQ resolutions in place.
LGBTQ rights advocates — including those who created the “Atlas of Hate,” a map outlining where anti-LGBTQ laws are in place — celebrated the repeal.
“I am very glad that this stage is coming to an end,” Jakub Gawron, one of the authors of the Atlas, told Notes from Poland in a statement. “But that does not change the fact that these resolutions should not have been passed at all.”
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