When local councilors adopted a resolution two years ago declaring their small town in southeastern Poland "free of LGBT,” the mayor didn’t see much harm in what appeared to be a symbolic and legally pointless gesture.
Today, he’s scrambling to contain the damage.
What initially seemed a cost-free sop to conservatives in the rural and religiously devout Polish borderlands next to Ukraine, the May 2019 decision has become a costly embarrassment for the town of Krasnik. It has jeopardized millions of dollars in foreign funding and, Mayor Wojciech Wilk said, turned "our town into a synonym for homophobia,” which he insisted was not accurate.