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Poland legalized homosex in 1932, and prostitution is not a crime. But with the election of a hard-right government last October, Poland stands out today in Europe for most thoroughly weaving anti-gay sex hysteria into its politics.

In Poznan on November 15th, that point was brought home at the end of a nightstick. Demonstrators tried to hold a rights march, only to face a ban from city hall on grounds of "security." When the candle-bearing marchers gathered anyway, they were met with skinheads and thugs from All Polish Youth, a wing of the Polish Families party, who pelted the marchers with eggs and taunted them with slogans such as "Gas the fags!" and "We'll do to you what Hitler did to the Jews!" Police did nothing to stop the violence-- except to arrest 68 of the pro-gay demonstrators for their "illegal" protest. "The police treated us like they treat football hooligans," one demonstrator told blogger Doug Ireland.

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Poznan authorities had banned previous gay marches, including one last June. And Warsaw mayor Lech Kaczynski banned the capital city's gay march for two years running. He won't be doing that again-- but only because last October 23rd Polish voters elevated him to the country's presidency. With his identical twin brother Jaroslaw Kaczynski as parliamentary leader, the two Law & Justice-party politicians have formed a minority government of hard-right xenophobes, including the Polish Family party.

Anti-gay rhetoric is at the fore. The new government is proposing to fire gay schoolteachers, and Prime Minister Kasimierz Marcinkiewicz warns that if a gay person "tries to infect others with their homosexuality, then the state must intervene in this violation of freedom." It's all mixed up with tough-on-crime grandstanding, bolstered by far-right Catholic factions, and paying lip service to Poland's economic and political insecurities.

As unemployment hovers near 20 percent, there are a lot of insecurities. It shouldn't be that way, right? Poland joined the European Union last year, cementing its ties to the West after almost two generations in Soviet-space. And whether it's sending its sons to die in Iraq or hosting secret torture prisons, Poland has proven America's loyal little brother in New Europe.

But the payoff hasn't happened. If Paris's fear about hordes of proverbial "Polish plumbers" helped defeat the EU constitution last spring, Poland's millions of impoverished farmers face new competition that will force most of them off the land-- which Germans flush with euros are poised to buy up on-the-cheap. Meanwhile Brussels bureaucrats are poking noses into Polish sausage-making, and other sensitive zones of national identity.

With anxieties about their status rife, and a huge percentage of the population hurting, queers are a ripe symbol of Western "degeneracy"-- despite what has been, over the centuries, a degree of Polish tolerance toward homosexuality, including cross-dressing balls in the 18th century Warsaw royal court.

Strangling Nightingales

Poland's descent into sexual hysteria was jump-started in June 2003 by the arrest of a conductor who rose to prominence under Communist rule, and whose homosexuality was an open secret.

Wojciech Krolopp directed the Polski Slowiki (Polish Nightingales), a boys' choir that Krolopp took from provincial Poznan to worldwide acclaim. Shortly after returning from a US tour in spring 2003, Krolopp was arrested by Poznan police, who cuffed the conductor in front of the boys right in the middle of a rehearsal.

Three young men-- all former singers at the choir school-- accused Krolopp of sexual contact occurring years before. But the accusations came only after the men had been arrested and kept in police custody for weeks, having videotaped themselves fiddling with students. One of the men had been an employee at the school who had been fired the year before by Krolopp himself, in response to complaints from parents.

Upon Krolopp's arrest, choir members and parents rallied in his defense at the downtown Pozann jail. The media bludgeoned the parents into silence by accusing them of conspiring with Krolopp to prostitute their sons to "sex rings of wealthy Westerners."

During Krolopp's trial, doctors leaked to the media that he had AIDS. The case became a falshpoint for national hysteria, fomented by one of Poland's main newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcz, which got start-up funds and keeps close ties to Washington neo-cons.

Fantastic claims-- that Krolopp was Poland's "Patient Zero" and that the choir was front for an international sex ring-- flooded the media for months.

During his trial-- which was held in secret when his accusers gave their testimony, but with details selectively leaked to the press-- Krolopp was somtimes dragged to court almost unconscious. It was reminiscent of Stalinist Poland, with, at one point in this state show-trial, Krolopp being portrayed by the press as a rodent in jail stripes.

Krolopp's lover was threatened with prison when authorites claimed the man had lied in court in leaving out details of their sexual relationship. In the end, 58-year-old Krolopp was convicted with no more evidence that the testimony of convicted felons, in a case that was likely as much about score-settling for the conductor's success under the Communists as queer sex. In July 2004, a judge sentenced the musician to eight years, more than the prosecution had demanded.

Having sung at the White House, the Vatican, and on the great stages of the world, the Slowiki were among Poland's most visible and prestigious cultural exports. But the choir was founded and thrived during the Communist regime, which the Polish neocons vowed to "cleanse" from memory.

A response?

Krolopp is likely to die in prison. But on other fronts, Polish gays are responding to the anti-gay backlash. After last November's debacle in Poznan, the national and all-volunteer group Campagin Against Homophoiba (www.kampania.org.pl) launched protests across the countury. In Gdansk, this march was also banned-- but happened anyway. When Prime Minister Marcinkiewicz visited London in November 24th, he was heckled by pro-gay demonstrators. In Brussels, EU parliamentarions have threatened Poland with suspention of its voting rights over its anti-gay policies and threats to restore the death penalty.

Poles are more anti-gay than is the European average-- 70 percent oppose gay marriage, in a recent poll, compared to 58 percent of Czechs. But the reality is that, with slight changes in rhetoric, the right-wing sex hysteria that now has a lock on Polish politics-- with minor variants-- is common-currency throughout the West. America's neo-apartheid sex-offender registries and the life-sentences handed down for loose-lips in internet chat rooms are not directly about homosex. But scratch the surface, see who's targeted, and you see that they are.

Poland may be tamed by its increasingly close encounter with Western Europe. Or with riot-torn "Old Europe" in its own existential malaise and Big Brother America looking ever more police-statish, Poland's current economic and political agonies point in the direction of a dark, authoritarian Western future.

"Dig those history books out of the basement," writes Poland-watcher David Ost. "Law & Justice is reviving the so-called 'Sanitation' politics of the 1930s." In many ways, Poland of the early 2000s is all of us.