The fashionable rising tide of homophobia in Europe

Teen Times:In a darkened hallway in one of the many identical buildings in the Auschwitz concentration camp, row upon of row of faces stare blankly at visitors. For many of them, this is their final image - heads shaven, faces sallowed, sporting the blue and white stripes of their uniform.

Their only crime was being Jewish, homosexual, Polish or falling within some other category the Third Reich deemed undesirable. Yet last year, just a few hundred kilometres away in the Polish capital Warsaw, a gay-rights march was attacked by protesters shouting: "Euthanasia for gays, concentration camps for lesbians."

More than 60 years after the fall of the Nazi regime it seems its ideas are still prevailing. The fact that many of the modern persecutors would have faced the same fate under the Third Reich as those they taunt simply heightens the irony.

Poland is a country that suffered greatly under the Nazis, with large numbers of their citizens sent to camps such as Auschwitz. It would be reasonable to assume, therefore, that they would be a people who recognise the importance of tolerance and keeping the oppression of ideas out of government policy. However, somewhere along the line, the opposite has become the case.

The homophobic comments aired recently in Ireland by Lech Kaczynski, the president of Poland, served only to highlight what has become a growing epidemic in his home country. It is easy to become complacent, wrapped as we are in the cellophane of a liberal democracy, with gay couples gaining the right to marry and adopt seeming inevitable. The news of state-sanctioned homophobia within our own continent seems bizarre by contrast. Yet that is what has come into public consciousness of late. And with it the dregs of conservative Ireland have re-appeared.

We are obsessed with our appearance. Whether it is the latest fashion from Brown Thomas or the newest gadget, there is always something that is a must-have. This is no different for political ideals, nor has it ever been. In September 1913, WB Yeats speaks of an Ireland where art and nationality are no longer important. Three years later, however, all had changed - nationalism and art had become fashionable and desirable once again. Similarly, a majority of the world's population abhors the actions of the Nazis, yet the same Nazis were ordinary people, swept up in the fashionable and acceptable ideals of their time. If we were all transported back in time and set in that social context many of us would see no strong reason to speak out.

President Kaczynski's comments are a clever attempt to awaken the bigot hiding in us all. He is attempting to make homophobia something that is viewed as acceptable, as he has managed to do in Poland. In the last week I have seen several closet homophobes creeping out of their hiding places, so perhaps he is succeeding.

There is something about social liberalism that sits so well with the idea of being a teenager. Challenging societal concepts and striking out on different ideological paths to our parents seems our raison d'être. As we grow older it is these concepts that become the societal norm, ready to be challenged by a new generation of teenagers.

While it is fashionable to be tolerant and accepting we can all sleep easy, fashion has a nasty habit of changing - in this way, tolerance could become as alien and repulsive a concept as homophobia is to so many people today.

Mark Haughton (18) is a first-year arts student at University College Dublin

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