Neither In Nor Out: The Paradox of Poland’s ‘LGBT-Free’ Zones

In April 2019, the administration of the surrounding province, also named Lublin, approved a similar declaration. The city of Lublin is the capital of the province, and like every good capital, it holds itself apart from the region it represents.

"LGBT-free zones? I don't care about this bullshit," said Milosz Zawistowski, an artist and part-time bartender from the city. "Lublin city has as much to do with Lublin province as Moscow has to do with the rest of Russia. It doesn't matter if you're gay here."

Lublin was the first of five provinces to meet the criteria for being an "LGBT-free zone". The provinces are concentrated in Poland's relatively under-developed south-east, the electoral heartland of the governing national-conservative Law and Justice party.

The emergence of these zones, spanning roughly a third of the country's territory, has coincided with Law and Justice's use of increasingly homophobic rhetoric to mobilise its electoral base.

Over the past two years, the party has won tightly-contested parliamentary and presidential elections with campaigns that portrayed gay people as paedophiles and talked up LGBT rights as an alien ideology menacing family, society and the Catholic faith.

Against a backdrop of this rhetoric, the "LGBT-free zones" have gained international notoriety. In Brussels and beyond, they are regarded as a worrying marker of Poland's descent into illiberalism - the ultimate territorial expression of state-sponsored homophobia.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has referred to them as "humanity-free zones", while Joe Biden re-tweeted and echoed her comments when he was campaigning to become US president. The European Parliament has also condemned the zones, most recently on...