As Hubert Sobecki and about a thousand others marched through the streets of Białystok for the city's first Pride March in late July, people shouted slurs and threw rocks. Others — hooligans, some in neo-fascist attire — attacked protesters with fists and kicks as they made their way through this conservative eastern city. 

"It was a lynch-like situation," said Sobecki, who is an LGBTQ activist from the organization Love Does Not Exclude. 

At the nearby Branicki Palace, one of many protests against Pride took the form of a picnic that featured a bouncy castle for children, live music, and several local members of the Law and Justice party (PiS), which has been in power since 2015. The violence of Bialystok’s Pride March, which resulted in dozens of injuries and at least 77 were fined or charged, has put rights organizations on high alert throughout Europe and the world. It ended that afternoon when police fired tear gas and used pepper spray to disperse the crowd of far-right protesters. 

While homophobia is nothing new in Catholic and conservative Poland, an energized anti-LGBTQ  narrative has emerged as the country prepares for the second of two major elections on Sunday. The source largely stems from the far-right government, whose leaders have made aggressive statements about the LGBTQ community. Recently, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the PiS leader, said  Poland was being threatened by LGBTQ people and from Europe, where families can have “two mummies or two daddies.”