As advocates in the United States brace for attacks on LGBTQI+ rights from an emboldened anti-LGBTQI+ movement employing the illiberal playbook, it is crucial to learn from those who have been resisting these strategies for years. In this webinar from the Carr Center's Global LGBTQI+ Changemakers Network, activists on the frontlines in Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria shared their hard-earned lessons and provided actionable strategies for anticipating, countering, and adapting to similar challenges.
The webinar featured Denitsa Lyubenova of Bulgaria, Head of Legal program at Deystvie; Luca Dudits of Hungary, Executive Board Member and Head of Communications, Háttér Society; and Bart Staszewski of Poland, LGBTQI+ activist, photographer, and documentary film director; moderated by Diego Garcia Blum, Director of the Carr Center's Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program.
"Hate crime and hate speech are not punished at all [in Bulgaria], even though we have legislation and it became part of the criminal code in 2023. There are still no investigations that take place, although there are many reports to the police and across our platforms of quite severe attacks against members of the community," said Denitsa Lyubenova. "How do we build resilience? What we learned from the last seven years, during which our communities were under constant attack, is to be together, to organize massive protests, to protect each other, to be vocal—because it literally saves lives, and to search for partners. We are constantly exchanging practices and ideas on how to oppose laws and policies that are trying to outlaw our work and us as part of the LGBTQI community."
"In 2019, the [Hungarian] government's attacks against the LGBTQ community started—they started using us as a scapegoat in their daily speeches. In 2020, they first banned legal gender recognition and later on passed several anti-LGBTQI measures. One of them was a very similar proganda law as in Russia and Bulgaria which banned showing LGBTQI people in all goods and services, in books, movies, advertisements, media content, and also school programs. Because this obviously violates EU directives, the European Commission launched an infringement procedure against Hungary, and in response to this, the government decided that they will demonstrate that Hungary has public support for this law with a referendum," said Luca Dudits. Luca's organization, Háttér Society, launched a campaign against the referendum and managed to defeat it in 2022.
"I really follow what is happening in the United States, and when Kamala Harris became the [presidential] candidate, I could see that she was missing LGBTQ topics in her speeches. Liberal candidates are not our advocates—they use us when they need us. This is the horrible true story. Of course, some of them believe in what we represent—that we are human beings, that we are deserve to have dignity in our lives—but at the very end, she is a politician who can be afraid of being labeled as 'woke.' This is the thing I see in the States which has become quite problematic. One solution to that is we need a charismatic leader in our communities who will speak for us, and we will promote them instead of the politicians. This is the key to success," said Bart Staszewski.