So, as I understand it, the objectionable policies:
1) are not enforced, or enforeable
2) are not at the national level
3) are not in Gdansk, the proposed location
Uh, huh? That seems like an oddly bigoted "all Polish are homophobes because those other Polish are homophobes" kind of response, to register disapproval of bigotry, if that's really the true story. Couldn't you use the same logic to say that it shouldn't be in Europe at all, because some European municipalities passed homophobic resolutions?
The national ruling party is apparently anti-LGBT and support these zones. So you can view it as not just isolated municipalities but rather the national government acting through municipalities.
The broader question being asked is, if this is the situation now, what else may be enacted before the conference. Things like, what if there's a foreign gay attendee who's blocked at airport security?
I don't believe this is probable. The ruling party wants to: 1. capitalize on bigotry of voters but 2. not lose business by being perceived as bigoted.
Harassing a gay person at the border would risk 2 while not contributing to 1.
> Things like, what if there's a foreign gay attendee who's blocked at airport security?
You must be kidding, right? Even though Poland is currently ruled by right-wing minority, and some of these are mindless assholes, any kind of real sexual discrimination is illegal and persecuted. If I was discriminated against at work because I'm gay, I'm in for good compensation as my case is pretty strong.
Given that the conference is in the future and they could well enact more of these zones, it feels perfectly reasonable to me that some organisers might feel that's not worth the risk.
Even if Gdansk is liberally run it sends a signal to legislators that policies effect revenue and gives them a reason to push back that avoids moral arguments. That being said, I think it cedes the moral argument to the opposition, but any fight like this has multiple fronts.
The reasoning is very different from what you wrote. Surely, you see the difference.
But the national government is pretty bigoted, and seems to be treating the anti-LGBT thing as a crusade right now. Seems like reasonable risk reduction for the organisers, if nothing else.
It still means the government is sending a signal that LGBTQ people are less worthy, attack our values etc., putting that community at risk. They may be in name only so the government may enjoy a degree of plausible deniability when inevitably violence happens against the targeted community.
You're accusing them of bigotry without weighing the clear higher value here, which is: solidarity for the conference goer who might be vulnerable to persecution because of these policies.
Well... no. It actually does, but what's your point then?
That LGBTQ people attending the conference ought to shut up and put up?
That these policies are harmless, and therefore justifiable?
(I think we can be certain the only justification for a policy like this is the intent to cause harm, because why make them a thing otherwise.)
You think these policies were intended to cause harm? I think that's quite a stretch. It's obvious that eastern European countries in particular see grave danger in these things and try to keep them out. That's their right to do so.
It’s possibly their right to do so (depending on if these ‘declarations’ survive the Polish and European courts). It’s also the right of conference organisers to go somewhere with a less unpleasant government, though.
The term "race" has been used for a lot of things, and it was definitely commonly used for groups like Polish, Irish, French, etc. long before it was commonly used for just four or so groups in all of humanity. Reading in 18th and 19th century writings I see references to the English race or the Italian race or whatnot, and rarely a reference to whites or blacks as a race.
I'd understand avoiding a city that has these policies, but avoiding the whole country because of bigoted decisions in other municipalities strikes me as strange thinking.
It's not like every Polish person is in support. If you live in Poland and some municipalities (not even yours) passes discriminating rules, what can you do? Move?
Are we suddenly implicitly supporting every dumb shit done by people that are in some way or other similar to us? It's absurd.
I've only skimmed a few articles about the issue, but it seems like this isn't just a matter of a handful of municipalities acting independently, but rather those declarations are tied into a broader push by the national ruling party to make LGBT people its political bogeyman du jour. Politicians have made a bunch of statements to the effect that LGBT is a foreign ideology that seeks to sexualize children and represents a threat to Polish identity.
Poland is hard-core Catholic, same as Italy, Austria, Croatia, and a few others. They are conservative to the core. Trying to lecture a Catholic about anything that has to do with sex, doesn't go down well.
I've been living in Eastern EU (including Poland) for the past 5 years (I myself am from the West of EU). All of the former soviet block has a problem with homophobia. As much as I love the people and enjoy my time here, there is no way in hell I would want to be here as an openly gay person. At best you'd get beaten after leaving a club at worst you end up knifed. Young people are a lot better in this regard but people at my age (those who lived through the iron curtain) would never support LGBT. They see it as an attack on their identity and culture. Poland is also deeply divided - much more so than Germany or France. The only place I know which has more racism than the Eastern EU and which is also more divided is Britain.
The only place I know which has more racism than the Eastern EU and which is also more divided is Britain.
You mean the country that:
1. Is the most racially diverse country in Europe
2. And which just elected a government with a historically huge mandate, partly because the opposing party was plagued by accusations of anti-semitism?
That divided and racist country?
Most people haven't lived in eastern Europe and would accept your views by default, indeed, I've never lived there either (have visited many times though). But if you really believe the UK of all places is the most racist and divided place you know then you can't really know Europe at all, or indeed what racism truly is, because that's the exact opposite of how it really is. Perhaps you are getting your views exclusively from German newspapers?
> 1. Is the most racially diverse country in Europe
I haven't been able to find any reliable statistics about this, and it probably depends on how you define "race".
> 2. And which just elected a government with a historically huge mandate, partly because the opposing party was plagued by accusations of anti-semitism?
This is just bizarre. It would be far more justifiable to argue that some people voted for the government partly because they wanted to end Freedom of Movement, to reduce immigration into the UK. Discussing why these people wanted reduced immigration is more complicated, though since there's no real economic grounds for it, the main possibilities are misinformation (fuelled by certain media, because it sells well), scapegoating and xenophobia.
Also, what about the 32 % of people who voted for Labour despite it supposedly being "plagued by accusations of anti-semitism"?
In any case, since elections are never about one issue, drawing these sorts of conclusions is dangerous.
I thought we were moving beyond "immigration quotas are racism"? Eastern Europe is almost entirely white so reducing immigration from there couldn't be racist to start with. But didn't the results from the last election show what a completely dead-end attitude that is? Labour constantly gave the impression they thought immigration controls were immoral or racist and had their worst defeat in a long time.
People in the UK overwhelmingly want to reduce immigration, something like 80%+ want that so it's a massively bipartisan issue, not because the entire country is seething with racism (where's the evidence for this extreme claim?) but because the existing policy recognises no limits on infrastructure build outs. It just assumes that infrastructure to support a person magically appears the moment someone chooses to move, which isn't true and obviously isn't true. That means it's a very naive policy that results in constant shortages and overloads.
And that's before you get into the economic and pace-of-change issues. The only people who believe that allowing an unlimited supply of low wage labour into a country has no effect on local wages are academic economists. Clearly lots of people believe otherwise.
But sure, whatever, by all means, believe a place immigrants choose to move in huge numbers is filled with hatred and racism against them. Believe that the entire thing is just misinformation. Believe what you want. It doesn't matter much anymore: those views lost.
Firstly, just to clarify: I don't have a strong opinion on whether Britain is the most racist country in Europe. If you had to press me for an answer, it's probably about average, recently become slightly worse than average. I did strongly disagree with your previous claims that it's "the exact opposite of how it really is" (i.e. that the UK is by far the least racist) and that people not voting for Labour somehow means that they can't be racist.
> I thought we were moving beyond "immigration quotas are racism"?
They're not automatically racist, but support for them can still be motivated by racism, especially when people are willing to risk suffering economically themselves to reduce immigration.
> Eastern Europe is almost entirely white so reducing immigration from there couldn't be racist to start with.
I'm not sure why skin-colour is so important. Jews are "white" (or at the very least the Jews who live/lived in Europe are/were white), but antisemitism is considered a form of racism. In any case, whether you call it "racism" or not, there could still be xenophobia and prejudice.
> People in the UK overwhelmingly want to reduce immigration, something like 80%+ want that so it's a massively bipartisan issue,
I have not seen any such polls. The most that I could find was 76 % in favour of reduced immigration, but I could also find recent (2019/11) polls with a small majority (56 %) in favour of keeping FoM. The latter seems consistent with the result of the recent GE where more people voted for parties intending to keep FoM than those that wanted to get rid of it (the split was around 54-46). The former poll could also, in principle be (people would like to reduce immigration, but on net, would not want to lose FoM, including their own FoM; also elections aren't single-issue).
> not because the entire country is seething with racism
Nobody is claiming that everybody even slightly opposed to immigration is racist — that would be absurd.
> but because the existing policy recognises no limits on infrastructure build outs.
The fact that people are generally most in favour of reducing immigration in the areas with the least immigration weakens the argument that they're motivated by legitimate concerns about the infrastructure not coping.
> But sure, whatever, by all means, believe a place immigrants choose to move in huge numbers is filled with hatred and racism against them
Immigrants also move from South Asia to the Middle East, despite there being immense systemic discrimination against them, for economic reasons.
> Perhaps you are getting your views exclusively from German newspapers?
yes it must be all those German newspapers I read while I was living in the UK. /s
I don't make armchair philosophy statements! my experience comes from living abroad since the age of 16 and never having stopped (e.g. never live in the same place for more than 5 years). So you can insinuate whatever, I _know_ what I experienced.
Seriously the number of times British expats in Germany asked me "how I feel about the war", one guy even said once "aren't you ashamed of your grandfathers sins". He assumed I was German which isn't the case. This was the kind of Brits who have an open worldview. The type that actually leaves the UK to work abroad ... None of them bothered to learn the lingo and preferred to hang out with other English speakers rather than mix with locals. Not to mention the number of times they thought I was British and thought it was OK to make degrading jokes about foreigners.
My mother lives in Spain. And I used to live in the South of France. Both places have a large British expat community. Not once have I seen the Brits integrating into the local culture. Instead they mix exclusively among themselves like some Raj ruling class. Rarely ever hanging out with the locals, despite themselves getting invited by locals, ... or while other foreigners would try to mingle with everyone else, Brits rather stay among themselves. They can't be arsed to learn another language either.
I may sound like I hate Brits. Actually it is the most fascinating and funny people I know. But oh my god - it is an awful lot of work to make friends with them if you aren't native English speaker yourself.
The only other people I know who keep treating you like an outsider even if you've been among their midst for years are the Japanese. I know not because "armchair philosophy" but because I'm married to one since >20 years! AMA
Come on, you started by talking about the country being the most "racist and divided" in Europe, now you're admitting you've not lived there a long time and are talking about expats asking dumb questions. That's not the same thing at all.
Immigrants often group together, wherever they come from. Big Russian community where I live. The UK of course has entire areas where the immigrant population doesn't speak English, or where many of the shops are Polish (and use the Polish language). New York famous for certain areas being dominated by certain nationalities at various points (e.g. Italians). It sounds like you think this is uniquely British, but it's not.
By the way, I'm a British immigrant living abroad. All but two of my friends are not British. Their friends are also mostly not British. I've got qualifications in German and my girlfriend is German. You're painting with an extremely broad brush here. I think you just don't really notice the Brits that blend in, or other nationalities that don't.
As for language, native English speakers of all origins find it hard to learn local languages because nearly everyone learns English as a child and are routinely exposed to English language culture. Native speakers learn, at most, one or two other languages that may not be used at all in the place they end up, and they're rarely exposed to other languages anyway. Naturally that means whoever they talk to is better at English than the other way around, and few people want to struggle through a miniature language class when they have other things to do. Yes, most British immigrants should try harder to learn the language. But it's wrong to claim that's just laziness. When I was first learning lots of the local people here gave a strong impression they didn't actually care or worse, just found it annoying.
You might be confusing the really liberal city of Vienna with the rest of Austria, which is -in big parts- very different, less open, and to a large degree support the FPÖ party.
most of the Austrian countryside is rich, they have a well working social safety net and great public health. many farmers have branched out decades ago into tourism and sustainable techniques (realizing they can't compete across EU with countries like Holland where everything is flat). Those who want to work mostly find work.
The Austria I'm talking about doesn't see any tourists. It's more about of disposable income and people with very rigid skills losing their jobs to automation. It is not a rural/urban issue!
Money doesn't make people happy but it makes dealing with misery a lot less stressful. A farmer might change their worldview because s/he suddenly has to serve and cater to tourists/guests with wildly different views. The mining worker in Eisenerz who hasn't gotten a pay rise in 2 decades might not be so open in their worldview. Both the farmer, and the mining worker live on the countryside. Then there are the Eastern European workers from Hungary and Czech serving tourists and being employed by the Hotels, restaurants and cafes. There is no "ghetto" or a "outsiders" vs insiders feeling anywhere. The bosses are happy, everyone earns.
Polish person here.
Yes, the ruling party caters to ultra-catholic, right-winged people. While there are many people in Poland who don't understand LGBT and are therefore scared of it, they are a minority. We have a trans woman in parliament and a gay guy running for presidency. It's not that bad really.
Moreover, Gdańsk, where the conference was supposed to take place is actually one of the most tolerant and liberal cities in Poland with very open-minded people. It would be a shame to punish them for actions of the government and municipalities that are literally on the other side of the country.
Thanks for that insight. It seems sad to be fearful of an entire country because of a few municipalities; especially when you say there are minorities represented in government.
All over Europe, there are a lot of people who have varying opinions about immigration, refugees, LGBT-rights, Brexit, climate change and other controversial subjects. Rejecting an entire nation as a conference location because some percentage of the population has gotten some press for their controversial opinion seems very reactionary.
> Politicians have made a bunch of statements to the effect that LGBT is a foreign ideology
You can thank the radical left and their very real gender-based ideology for that development - they just gave bigoted politicians everywhere a handy excuse to attack basic freedom of association. Genius of them, really.
They’re supported by the national ruling party. As a gay person I wouldn’t currently be particularly enthusiastic about going to Poland.
I’ve also heard of gay married couples from EU countries (ie having an effective automatic right of admission) having trouble at airport border control.
XDC2017 was located in the US which has an infamous situation in regard it its airport border control, with people being denied entry or detailed without explanations. I also know people who in 2017 (and still are) refusing to travel to the US because of those issues. With the demands for unlocking encrypted computers, password to social media accounts, secret black lists, and profiling, there is a lot of to be worried about.
Maybe they should just do as fosdem and always have it in Belgium.
Participating countries are allowed to check your identity documents at a Schengen border in order to confirm that you are entitled to cross it without any other steps. They're even allowed to record that you crossed, using the ID to track who you were (and Poland does), though they aren't allowed to record that on a passport or similar travel document.
Having confirmed you're an EU citizen who isn't subject to an arrest warrant you're entitled to cross the border and there are no other checks permitted. They aren't entitled to ask you to explain where you're going or why or anything like that.
There's a similar internal border not far from me at the local airport. There's a painted line and it has a nice sign which explains that they don't actually have any officials present at the border, but if you don't have documentation allowing you to cross or if you've arrived with products that are prohibited you can phone them, they'll send somebody over in a few hours to interrogate and if necessary arrest you. There's a phone provided, it looks pretty dusty. I guess it's possible that people decide not to call?
They are still allowed to have police present at the internal border and checking both your id, itinerary and asking questions about your visit as long as it’s not “systematic”.
TIL four EU countries (plus three micro-states, but they have open borders) are outside the Schengen area. So I stand corrected.
But I see that they are all expected to enter the agreement. Does anyone know how long this will take? Romania and Bulgaria have been members for close to 13 years. What's taking so long?
Ireland and the UK have indefinite opt outs. Historically the common travel area with the UK made it impractical for Ireland to join unless the UK did too. It’s plausible that Ireland will join in the future, depending on what happens with Northern Ireland post Brexit.
Seems an odd choice to avoid a whole country just because some municipalities far away from the conference venue passed some bad laws. By the same reasoning you could also arguing for avoiding the whole of the EU since those municipalities are also in the EU.
> just because some municipalities far away from the conference venue passed some bad laws
...while being widely supported by the ruling party that follows the same world view, you forgot to add. It's not just "some municipalities"; it's the current political direction of Polish leaders and therefore Poland as a country.
Well, assuming you support euthanasia (NL), or like visiting a country which let the Wermacht pass through it into Russia (SW) and speaks about its “200 years of peace”, one that makes simple possession of drugs illegal (DEN), one in which surprisingly there is 0% incidence of Down’s syndrome (ICE), and too tired to look for something in FIN.
None of those are policies which discriminate against potential attendees of a conference or would cause them hassle.
>Wermacht pass through it into Russia
Very relevant 70 years ago.
edit: You seem to be confused about the difference between "policies I personally don't like" and "policies which aim to hurt a certain group that is attending this conference."
Mmmh it depends on: age and health of the visitor; whether he carries stuff considered “drugs”, or if he or she visits with a child with Down’s and is frowned upon (not unlikely).
So being proud of the acts to keep peace (whatever they are) is irrelevant.
I am Polish and it looks to me as this is decision is based on politics. No one is prosecuting gay people in Poland but indeed there are people/organizations who are against LGBT ideology (and I do believe that the same can be said about other Western countries). Polish fought for decades to have a right to express freely and openly their ideas and toughs and I hope that pressure from any organization will not change our attitude to freedom of speech and thought.
Polish people have the right to be bigoted if they wish to. Whether they have the right to make bigoted legal ‘declarations’ is a matter for their own courts and the ECJ and ECHR. However, organisations absolutely have the right to take note of such laws and plan their conferences accordingly.
As a terrifying gay, Poland wouldn’t be high on my list of places to visit right now, and I doubt I’m the only one.
From reading a bit more on the issue those zones are defined as free of LGBT _ideology_. Poles seem to make distinction between homosexuality and LGBT movement, which is valuable insight. But media portrays it as zones where homosexual people are not welcome. That’s not right. It’s concerning how much pressure there is to accept LGBT ideals.
What is this sinister ideology you presume us scary gays to have, precisely? I mean, I would have thought “please don’t treat us as second class citizens” about sums it up.
You're right that there is no such thing as "gay ideology". Unfortunately though, the discussion isn't about that but rather "LGBT ideology", which isn't really well defined but my guess is the Poles mean something like "minority-oriented identity politics", perhaps combined with "non-child producing relationships are great and to be celebrated rather than merely tolerated". Consider that LGBT contains trans-sexuality which isn't the same thing as homosexuality, but it all gets grouped together.
As for being treated as second class citizens, well, it's worth studying why that happened to ensure there's no repeat of it. Historically speaking there's a correlation between homophobia and societies wealth, that is, wealthier societies have less of it and poorer societies have more of it. Or more accurately it's related to the size of the state. This is easy to understand in the context of how to support the elderly: in a poor country with a small state, the family unit is essential for social stability as people without children have no real way to support themselves in old age. Without any welfare state they become a burden on their neighbours.
So the social pressure to have children in poorer countries with weak welfare systems is understandably very large. About 10% of men are homosexual so a completely free and open gay-tolerant culture effectively requires villages and towns to support 10% of a childless male population in old age or sickness, something that's completely impossible without a large, sophisticated and consensually-based welfare state. Which of course most parts of the world didn't have for a very long time and many places still don't have. Social pressure on gay men to find a wife and have children despite their orientation was thus the only tool available.
Ex-Soviet states in particular are full of people who watched as a government that provided a lavish welfare state ended up collapsing completely, impoverishing millions. It's not a huge surprise that we see a lot of family-oriented conservatism there as a consequence. They have direct experience of the opposite approach failing them.
This sort of analysis matters because it suggests there might be a problem in future if we don't find ways to make society much more wealthy, due to the financial viability problems facing many pension schemes, large government deficits in many countries etc. Are the current levels of welfare state spending viable? I think they certainly can be, as there are countries with strong safety nets and balanced budgets. But in many western countries they're currently on borrowed time. At the moment politicians are trying to solve this via mass immigration to ensure the young population can still support the old, but that's increasingly facing pushback in Europe and America. If at some point the welfare state stops delivering on its promises and governments start slashing pension rights, as happened during the collapse of the USSR, then social pressure to have children will return and we might see anti-gay sentiment flare up again.
I don't like where this analysis leads, but fortunately I don't see any fundamental barriers to increasing productivity by a large amount and thus balancing the welfare books. As long as the welfare state is strong, LGBT people will be able to live in peace.
I really don't buy that in this case. Poland's population has been stagnant or falling since the fall of the Soviet Union, like most of the rest of the Eastern bloc, and politically motivated homophobia has ramped up abruptly in the last year (rather than, say, in the early naughties, as you'd expect if it was actually associated with worries about population). I'd more or less assume it's because the migrant crisis has largely ended, so PiS needs something new to scare people with.
EDIT: Incidentally, I suspect that much the same thing has happened more broadly in the developed world with trans people. In the late 20th and early 21st century, many Western European countries passed major reforms to trans rights, and it largely went without comment from the far right, because they were at the time fixated on same-sex marriage. It was only _after_ most countries legalised same-sex marriage and the sky failed to fall in that the "trans people are corrupting and impurifying all of our precious bodily fluids" thing started, and it only wound up to full volume as the perceived threat of the migrant crisis faded (to the point that it now seems to be basically the primary issue for some European far-right groups). Some people, presumably, always need an enemy. I wonder who it'll be next.
Yes, but issues that politicians pay attention to isn't at all a perfect correlation for issues that the population cares about. They tend to only focus on a handful of issues at the same time for instance. It's possible PiS is now focusing on it for the first time but those attitudes were there the whole time.
edit: Oh, for transsexuality, perhaps the issue is that it seems to be increasing? It's an extremely rare thing in any event but it makes sense that if the numbers start going up it'd attract more attention:
So what this conference supposed to be about? X.Org and related projects development or how sexual life and preferences is affecting it?
Seems that people downvoting in reddit fashion are failing to see the absurdity of this decision which is clearly caused by mixing professional and private life by the interested party.
If it had been Grozny you'd have a point. But as far as I know the safety of lbgtq people is not under threat in Poland, despite the issue being heavily politicised.
