Campaign Against Homophobia, a well-known Polish LGBT organisation, has launched its social ad campaign within the framework of the anti-homophobia action week of Council of Europe's initiative All Different All Equal. The campaign will bring two editions of posters to the streets of Warsaw, with the aim to provoke citizens to feel the level of pressure and hatred that surrounds lesbians and gays and their friends and families every day.

The campaigns teaser posters "What are you staring at, faggot!?" and "What are you staring at, dyke!?" are used as a symbolic summary of all the wide-spread forms of homophobia in Poland today – regular hate-speech from the leading politicians, growing intolerance and exclusion by the other groups of society, negative stereotyping by the media etc. The teasers are to evoke the feeling of being attacked, being insulted and create an understanding of what are the effects of homophobia; the whole campaign aims to combat negative attitudes and intolerance towards lesbians and gays.

Robert Biedron, president of Campaign Against Homophobia, says: “We have received a lot of reactions from the citizens of Warsaw, at first people thought this is a campaign of a far-right League of Polish Families party and this is a good proof showing that such language is known to belong to a government party.” . Biedron also says that the teasers are doing exactly what they are to do – making people feel shocked and insulted. “This is the feeling which lesbians and gays in Poland experience regularly. When the president of Poland goes to Dublin and claims that homosexuality will lead us to the end of civilization, does it shock and insult me? Absolutely. When a leading politician of a government party claims that all homosexuals are paedophiles, is that shocking? Without a doubt. When a Polish Member of the European Parliament calls LGBT organisations "faggotry unions", is it insulting? Indeed. There are plenty of such and even more blatant examples of homophobia from the past years. Now we have these posters up in the city for some days, and people are shocked - this, I believe, is a good thing. We need to start noticing homophobia aroud us," Biedron comments. "I must say that I am proud of the people that have been calling to Clearchannel [provider of surfaces for posters] to demand these posters to be taken down because they offend gays and lesbians. This tells us that in fact people do not accept homophobia, and the views of homophobic politicians are not representing the views of Poles," says Biedron.

One of the aims of the campaign is also to encourage the citizens to speak up against homophobia more, not only in the extreme cases. “We as a society have a responsibility to protect the different groups within, and speaking out against all forms of prejudices, intolerance and discrimination is our most honourable task,” says Biedron, “we should not wait until we have more and more data on hate crimes or discrimination cases, we should react now to prevent all these things from happening.”.

The main posters of the campaign will be seen on the streets of Warsaw from March 5th which is also the opening date for an exhibition on collected pieces of homophobia – newspaper articles, magazine covers, news clips and much more. All of the presented materials are collected over the past years and are in a way or another symbolically highlighting the amount of hatred and prejudices that gays, lesbians, bisexuals, trans-people and their families and friends are surrounded by. Sentences like “we will manage without tolerance,”; “when faggots begin to demonstrate, they should be beaten with sticks,” are part of the average every-day language of Polish politicians, officials and even government members. The exhibition picks out these examples from around us, puts them on a wall, and makes it impossible to pretend that such things do not happen and homophobia is not a problem in Poland.

IN SHORT -
Social ad campaign and an exhibition of collected pieces of homophobia in Poland - “Homophobia, this is what it looks like!”
In Warsaw, Poland, from February 26-March 14, within the framework of All Different All Equal campaign of Council of Europe.
ON THE ORGANIZER -
Campaign Against Homophobia (KPH) is a nation-wide LGBT organization with branches in 7 cities over Poland. KPH has been actively involved in anti-discrimination work since 2001, and has mainly been focusing on public opinion, political advocacy and policy development work in relation to LGBT matters in Poland.

Campaign Against Homophobia: www.kampania.org.pl

Council of Europe's All Different, All Equal campaign: http://alldifferent-allequal.info/