Companies pull ads from ‘LGBT-free zone’ paper Gazeta Polska

Following a campaign launched by Stop Funding Hate, major companies are removing their ads from Gazeta Polska due to the release of anti-LGBT+ stickers.

News . Written by Oisin Kenny.

Family and members of LGBT+ community holding heart signs in Poland. Recently Polish newspaper Gazeta Polska has come under fire for distributing anti-LGBT stickers

Major companies, including Squarespace, Bravissimo, and Ergo, are pulling their advertisements from Polish newspaper Gazeta Polska after the paper released ‘LGBT-Free stickers’. The companies began removing their advertisements in response to a Twitter campaign launched by Stop Funding Hate.

Stop Funding Hate created an online Twitter campaign calling for people to contact companies to “let them know where their ad is appearing”. 

Since then, the software company Squarespace have removed their ads from Gazeta Polska’s online publication, saying “our ads will no longer appear with this publisher”. 

Insurance company Ergo blocked the paper from any further ad campaign, saying, “We just talked to our Polish colleagues. The ad was placed as part of a wide-ranged campaign and unintentionally placed in this newspaper. The ad will be removed and the website will be blocked from the campaign”.

Following Gazeta Polska’s announcement of the stickers as part of their July 24 edition, the publication received an injunction by the Warsaw District Court. LGBT+ activist Bartosz Staszewski brought a complaint against the anti-LGBT+ stickers to the court.

Despite the court injunction, the conservative publication is determined to continue releasing anti-LGBT+ stickers.

The publication, which has a circulation of around 11,000 subscribers, has frequently stated that the LGBT+ rights movement “have all the features of a totalitarian ideology”.

Following the release of the stickers, openly gay deputy mayor of Warsaw, Paweł Rabiej, wrote on Twitter: “The German Fascists created zones free of Jews. Apartheid – from black. As you can see, the tradition finds worthy followers, this time in Poland, under an umbrella @pisorgpl and bishops”.

The LGBT+ community in Poland has been facing several attacks in the past few months. Only a couple of months ago, leader of Poland’s conservative ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS) Jarslaw Kaczynski’s stated that LGBT+ community “threaten our identity, our nation, its continuation and therefore the Polish state.” More recently, local governments in Poland have declared themselves ‘free of LGBT+ ideology’.

© 2019 GCN (Gay Community News). All rights reserved.

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