“Ex-gay” hardliners appear to be renewing a lapsed effort to promote disproven pseudo-science in Poland.
The website homoseksualizm.edu.pl just refreshed its lapsed YouTube channel two days ago with fresh video promoting the U.S. ex-gay Journey Into Manhood and reparative therapist Joseph Nicolosi.
That new video is a Polish-subtitled version of the video reviewed here by TWO’s Evan Hurst just yesterday. The video features the flimsiest claims of Exodus in its heydey: “Thousands” of cured ex-gays, same-sex-attracted men happily (and sexlessly) married to straight women, and the usual efforts to blame innocent parties for one’s sexual orientation.
Despite operating in a favorably antigay climate, the operators of the Polish website have concealed their public identity: The website’s contact page provides neither contact information nor a contact form. The site’s domain registration is anonymized. Given the absence of native Polish content, it seems likely that the site was either developed or heavily influenced by a U.S. antigay organization.
The site’s bookstore is heavily reliant upon the discredited works of reparative therapists Joseph Nicolosi and Janelle Hallman. Nicolosi made a big splash in Polish media last year, according to Box Turtle Bulletin.
Perhaps in anticipation of regulatory or professional backlash for the discredited content, every page on the site concludes with this disclaimer:
“The information published on this site is educational in nature, and none of the posted materials replace visits to a specialist.”
Poland does not currently have antigay sodomy laws, but more than a third of the Polish public supports such laws, and the U.S. Family Research Council and other evangelical groups support Polish conservatives’ desire to enact them. Anti-discrimination laws limit protection for sexual minorities to employment. Marriage of gay couples is constitutionally prohibited, and adoption by gay couples is prohibited. Numerous gay Poles fled the nation upon its entry into the European Union to escape uncomfortable and sometimes threatening social conditions: Approximately two-thirds of Poles oppose allowing sexual minorities to enjoy freedom of speech.
The Polish ex-gay site does not offer hope to Poland’s gay population; it offers excuses to archconservatives to escalate social ostracism and political persecution.
