European Union – Ever since the European Union declared itself a “LGBTQ freedom zone” on 11 March 2021, debate around “LGBTQ” ideology has been rampant in the media and, by extension, criticism of “intolerant” and “authoritative” Poland, where it is said that homosexuals were having their “rights”, and physical safety, constantly violated. Aside from the nonsense that has arisen, in part due to deliberate misrepresentation of the facts, we find that there is a certain lack of judgment, typical of our modern world, at the heart of this debate: the distinction between the individual and the ideology.
Indeed, Poland was one of the first European countries to decriminalise homosexuality in 1932 (Germany only followed suit in 1969) but there is a big difference between tolerating the freedom to organise one’s private life as one sees fit on the one hand and recognising homosexual relations as being on par with heterosexual ones. That difference is so big that the majority of Poles, and thus their parliament and government, are not ready to accept it. Therefore, the current debate is not at all centred around the simplistic notion of “protection of minorities” for these minorities actually have nothing to fear from either their fellow citizens or the state. What is actually being served up is an ideological choice that will have long-lasting consequences for the whole of society and that is why it is termed “LGBTQ ideology”, which is just a part of form of universalism known as “political correctness”.
According to this ideology, sexual identity is merely a “social construction” and absolutely not connected to human physiology, coupled with the notion that individual freedom would therefore consist of having the right to continually take on another “gender” and, by definition, other sexual roles. This would imply not only that marriage and adoption should be made available for everyone, that sex-change therapies and surgery should just be a “normal thing”, that representative “quotas” should be imposed in all companies, that LGBTQ subjects should be taught as early as primary school (or even kindergartens) but also, in the long term, that the idea of the natural family unit be done away with completely.
At every single debate, one key argument is constantly rolled out (besides the purely rhetorical calls to respect “love”): choosing the “lesser evil”. That is the “lesser evil” of comparing the (harmful) consequences of failed heterosexual relations with the (beneficial) consequences of successful homosexual ones. The “lesser evil” of children raised by loving homosexual parents instead of unhappy heterosexual parents. The “lesser evil” of having religious blessings of homosexual couples instead of running the risk of “alienating” them spiritually. The “lesser evil” of marriage open to all in order to provide political and financial appeasement to homosexual couples and so on and so forth. However, and as usual, what is always missing from this purely individualistic and rationalist equation is the question: what is in society’s interest? For what could be considered as a “lesser evil” for certain individuals may well lead to unhinging the foundations of an entire civilization.
Of course, the issue does not (only) lie with the simple notion of “relativisation” of the natural family, since both concepts are not (yet) in direct competition with one another. Few heterosexuals will change their sexual orientation in order to gain the legal advantages offered to a homosexual relationship or vice-versa. Instead, the issue is more substantive than that. The moment that natural law, and the respect of fundamental historic institutions that governs the construction of family units and their education, upon which our society is based on us disregarded as a “purely a social construct”, then all other limits will be tumbled down sooner or later. The exception, under the veil of “protecting minorities”, is brought up to the same level as the norm and the latter thus becomes meaningless, resulting in society rapidly imploding into a multitude of parallel societies where the consensus of all stakeholders that is sought, but rather that the dominant minority governs all others. Of course, this doesn’t just apply to sexual minorities but also to ethnic, cultural, religious and political minorities.
Sexuality, when disconnected to its initial physical basis and its natural vocation for reproduction, inevitably becomes just another hobby in which it would be absurd to put limits or regulate in one way or another. Once all the different forms of homosexuality are not only tolerated but placed on the same level as the traditional family, then there is no longer any logical argument to ban polygamous or incestuous relationships, or even paedophilia or zoophilia. Indeed, this has been something that the political left and environmental movement has been pushing for since 1968. Worse still, by integrating the notion of social constructivism into what defines a couple and a family it will lead, sooner or later, to the normalisation and spread of fundamentally toxic (even criminal) habits.
Furthermore, this ideology distinguishes itself as being particularly hostile to the established heterosexual model. Not satisfied to let that model be a valid one amongst all sorts of different ones, the political left considers the traditional family unit, which has already sustained heavy damage by the normalisation of divorce and the boom of stepfamilies, as a so-called “patriarchal” reactionary model of oppression or even, as Horkheimer and Deleuze put it, as a form of fascism.
Consequently, far from defending the rights of a small minority that is “threatened” by a huge oppressive majority, this complex and fundamentally anti-humanistic ideology undermines the last bastions of a family model that is being attacked on all sides. By attempting to disconnect Western society from is natural and historic roots, LGBTQ activists prove themselves to be the “useful idiots” of an ideological battle that they probably don’t even realise the scope.
Therefore, it is understandable that sooner or later, every genuinely conservative government has to establish very clear boundaries in order to defend its values and to distinguish between tolerance for individual choices of certain individuals and the fully-fledged formal legal recognition of an ideology that risks dismantling what is left of Western identity. Poland, and other countries in Eastern Europe, have made their choice and Western European countries, whose governments dominate the European Union, seem to have made theirs on 11 March 2021. What now follows will clearly show the consequences of those choices in terms of stability, prosperity and well-being of those respective societies.
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Translated from French by the Visegrád Post
