As the 2022 parliamentary elections approach in Hungary, the ruling party there is evidently taking the same path. In the 2020 presidential elections, the serving President of Poland, running for re-election, promised to prohibit the “propagation of LGBT ideology” in public institutions, calling it “worse than Communism”, and tabled a bill proposing to ban “any person in a relationship with another person of the same sex” from adopting children. In Poland, as I described in the Memorandum published in December 2020, high-ranking officials and politicians affiliated with the ruling coalition used the stigmatisation of LGBTI people as a campaign tool during the 2019 parliamentary elections. I warned against politicians using hate speech against LGBTI people during election campaigns in Moldova in a 2020 visit report and called on the authorities to take steps to tackle the problem. For example, in my report following a visit to Armenia in 2018, I concluded that various parliamentary bills discriminating against LGBTI people seemed to be deliberately designed to stoke anti-LGBTI sentiment as part of rivalry between opposing political parties. I have observed that stigmatisation of LGBTI people is particularly pronounced in the run-up to elections and votes. Scapegoating LGBTI minorities has become a tactic applied by ultra-conservative and nationalist politicians posing as defenders of so-called “traditional values” to strengthen their base and gain or stay in power. My own work provides further illustration of this trend and points to one key cause of the hatred: some politicians are instrumentalising existing societal prejudices and verbally attacking LGBTI people to achieve political objectives for their own benefit.
Over the last few years, my predecessor, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) and Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, as well as the European region of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA-Europe) and others have warned about a worrying rise in intolerance of LGBTI people in Europe. Stigmatisation of LGBTI people for political gain The progress of the past years coupled with persisting homo/transphobia in our societies have now provided fertile ground for exploitation by opportunistic and anti-human rights political movements. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that too many within the LGBTI communities remain vulnerable, exposed to intra-familial violence and without proper access to employment, housing and health care.
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At the same time, homo/transphobia continue to linger and to hinder LGBTI people’s full inclusion in society. Overall, public attitudes towards LGBTI people have markedly improved in many places. On the one hand, spectacular progress has been made in Europe in just a couple of decades: many Council of Europe member states have passed laws protecting LGBTI people from discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes 30 member states offer protection for stable same-sex relationships and the right to legal gender recognition has been strongly asserted. In so doing, public officials – sometimes at the highest level – are failing in their duty to promote equal dignity and human rights for all. In more and more European countries, politicians and public officials are shamelessly targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people for political gain, fuelling prejudice and hate. World Pride is being celebrated on our continent this week, but a surge in intolerance towards LGBTI people in Europe is nothing to be proud about.