The annual event once again proved to be a hugely important part of Poland’s LGBT calendar, with a full range of activities that helped foster cooperation and acceptance within Polish society.

Highlights of the festival also include the International March, which invited individuals and groups from across Europe to celebrate diversity and to demand international action on issues affecting The LGBT community.

The festival will also include an international march, which hopes to gather participants from across Europe to celebrate diversity and demand progressive change for the LGBT community.

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In thorn, this action was also conducted for last year’s IDAHOT but this year many more monuments and statues were wrapped in rainbow flags. You can find more images here.

On Saturday, May 16, around 350 activists gathered for the ‘traditional’ March for Equality in Krakow. They were confronted with a number of anti-demonstrators but protected by the police.

Source: queer.de

As part of the international IDAHOT vigils, the Church of St. Martin in Krakow hosted a service against Homophobia and Transphobia that was accompanied by a classical concert.

The international vigils are coordinated by Progetto Gionata.

Polish LGBT communities are currently facing big challenges. There has recently been a sustained upsurge in attacks on LGBT communities from the Polish Church hierarchy, as well as from neo-fascist groups, which are acting to silence communities, and have also started to “guard” people against the “gender ideology” they say is being imposed by activists. In this context, activists in Łódź, Poland had organised a colorful action to protest against the Anti-LGBT attacks in Polish society. And a local radio station held a program in celebration of IDAHOT.

Poland’s statues dress as rainbows!

“If Tuwim Lived Today, He’d Be Against Homophobia”

Łódź is a city born out of diversity and tolerance from many different cultures. To underline this fact, the statues in the city, preserving the memory of great city figures, have been decorated with rainbows of flowers and balloons on May 16, with the motto “Speak out against hate!”. The message was that the great figures of the city, as well as common citizens spoke out against tactics which legitimize hatred and serve to silence LGBT communities.

Source: Fabryka Równosci

Factory Radio also streamed the program “Homophobia, the worst disease” by Chumbawamba. In connection with the 55 group, Student birthday Radio Żak Technical University of Lodz and the Jubilee 55-hour ramówką, the program was broadcasted on Sunday, May 18.

Source: Fabryka Równosci

Further Information

• You can find more information and pictures of the action on Fabryka Równości website or on their Facebook page.

Anti-homophobia video Spoko, Ja Też (Okay, I do) released on May 17

The video features a selection of LGBT young people who recount their experiences of violence and discrimination in schools, with a strong message of unacceptability, and finally hope. The video received a formal accolade from the Polish Children’s Ombudsman, Marek Michalak, who wrote to the organisers Kampania Przeciw Homofobii (KPH, Campaign Against Homophobia): “I believe that thanks to the campaign Spoko, Ja Też (Okay, I do) society becomes more tolerant and that it will contribute to the fight against homophobia. I’m rooting for your project.”

For the release the organisers released the following statement in English: “My teacher told us that homosexuals are junkies and are born on train stations”, “I learned in school that gay people are incapable of feeling love and that they have a sick sexual drive”, “I have been terrorized for the last four years”, “they called me a faggot and the teacher laughed along with them”, “I got beat up in school, the school counselor told me that when I’ll look more masculine everything will be OK”, “the teachers can’t tell the difference between homosexuality and peadophilia”, “in school we had a lesson on how to cure homosexuality with God’s help”, “they don’t let me use the bathroom cause I don’t like a boy or a girl”, “thirty students stood in front of the school and shouted FAGGOT! FAGGOT! And didn’t let me take my exam”.

The young stars of the video speaking on Polish radio

For many years we have been providing psychological crisis intervention and legal aid to victims of homophobia and transphobia. Last year we conducted the first research on the situation of LGBT young people in schools and published a report: “Lesson of Equality – Attitudes and Needs of Youth and School Staff towards LGBT issues”. Finally, we invited young LGBT people to take part in our video campaign and tell us, in front of the camera, about their experience. These are the sources of the quotations you read at the beginning of this e-mail.

Today we are celebrating IDAHO. Apart from the advocacy and lobbying we do with the Ministry of Education and the trainings we are providing to school staff, as a piece of the answer to the needs defined through that research, we are launching a video campaign called “Cool, me too!”.

This is the first out of five videos and this is the first time when LGBT youngsters in Poland will hear their peers saying on TV “it can’t be that someone is calling you names or spitting on you just because they don’t like the way you are, they don’t have the right, they just don’t!”, “you have the right to be yourself and to be happy”.