Don’t try putting on a Drag Queen Story Hour in certain Polish towns — you’ll only get dragged away. In fact, more than 80 localities in the nation have explicitly declared themselves “LGBTQ-free zones,” raising sexual devolutionary ire to the point where the European Parliament has now condemned the declarations.

Vice reports on the story, writing that “MEPs voted by 463 votes to 107 Wednesday in favor of a resolution condemning discrimination against LGBTQ people in Poland, and explicitly calling on the Polish government to revoke discriminatory measures such as the ‘LGBTQ-free zones,’ established by dozens of conservative local authorities that have symbolically declared themselves free from ‘LGBTQ ideology.’”

‘”The European Parliament urges Polish authorities to condemn these acts and to revoke all resolutions attacking LGBTI rights,’ the European Parliament said in a statement.”

Homosexual privileges — often euphemistically called “gay rights” — “have become a hot-button issue in Poland this year since the ruling right-wing populist Law and Justice [Party] made its opposition to ‘LGBTQ ideology’ a central platform of its campaigns for national and European elections,” Vice also tells us.

The party’s pro-virtue rhetoric, echoed by faithful Catholics, “nationalist groups and state-run media, has painted gay rights as a dangerous, alien ideology — imported from the decadent, liberal West — that threatens the traditional, Catholic family unit,” Vice continues.

The site also informs that “Law and Justice chairman Jarosław Kaczyński, Poland’s de facto leader, warned in April of an ‘imported’ LGBTQ movement that ‘threatens our identity, our nation ... and therefore the Polish state.’”

Reflecting this stance, neither same-sex “marriage” nor the intermediate step to it, civil unions, has government recognition in Poland. Then there are the socially enforced prohibitions. For example, homosexual “pride” marchers this summer in the Polish city of Bialystok were outnumbered fourfold by counter-protesters — and, wholly unwelcome, were subjected to some violence.

Poland, though, is rather lenient and late to the game compared to the land of its erstwhile master. In 2013, Russia enacted a law essentially prohibiting pro-homosexuality propaganda.

“Under the law, private individuals deemed to be promoting ‘homosexual behaviour among minors’ face fines of up to 5,000 roubles (£67; $85), while officials risk paying 10 times that amount,” wrote the BBC in 2017. “Businesses and schools can be fined up to 500,000 roubles.”

Interestingly and unexpectedly, left-wing filmmaker Oliver Stone called the law “sensible.” Reflecting the prevailing liberal sentiment, however, was the “European Court of Human Rights,” which condemned the law in 2017 and deemed it discriminatory. Of course, the court seems to have no problem with Western Europe’s hate-speech laws, which punish expression of politically incorrect views.

Yet that sexual devolutionary propaganda is allowed in Poland — a land in which I’ve spent much time — bodes ill for traditionalist forces. Why? Well, in their 1989 book After the Ball, homosexual activists Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen laid out strategy for the future. To quote them, they called for a “conversion of the average American’s emotions, mind, and will” on homosexual behavior “through a planned psychological attack, in the form of propaganda fed to the nation via the media.”

The homosexual activists predicted that if they can “produce a major realignment solidly in favour of gay rights, the intransigents (like the racists of twenty years ago) will eventually be effectively silenced by both law and polite society.”

And 20 years later, the aforementioned hate-speech laws — prohibiting much criticism of homosexuality — were already a Western world reality.

The lesson is that the media’s and entertainment’s messaging is significant for the same reason why corporations spend hundreds of billions of dollars yearly on advertising: It works. The young are especially influenced, being malleable, which is why Greek philosopher Plato spoke of cultivating in children an “erotic” (meaning emotional) attachment to virtue; this ensures that, upon maturity, they’ll be more receptive to reason’s dictates.

Unfortunately, it’s even easier to develop in kids an erotic attachment to vice, and the influence can be forever. As the Jesuit saying goes, “Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man.”

This said, our Sexual Devolution began long before Kirk and Madsen wrote their book, long before even the 1960s. As G.K. Chesterton predicted in 1926, “The next great heresy is going to be simply an attack on morality; and especially on sexual morality. And it is coming ... from the living exultant energy of the rich resolved to enjoy themselves at last.”

In truth, the descent began when society resolved that sexuality didn’t have to be confined to marriage and involve both unitive and procreative aspects; it can just be a physical act for fun — and thus was born, along with far fewer babies, the term “recreational sex.”

So then fornication was accepted because that was fun, and cohabitation was accepted because that was convenient. And as justifications and rationalizations were desired, moral relativism was accepted because that was all-absolutory.

Fun was not to be stigmatized, either, with those daring to dissent dismissed as stodgy, prudish killjoys. Sex was moved from the category of morality to that of taste, from that of principle to that of preference. But the thing about matters of taste is that they’re not matters of Truth. We’d never call someone “wrong” or immoral, for instance, for rejecting the standard flavors and preferring rainbow ice cream.

Thus, once the majority decided to have its fun, it was only a question of time before minorities would flaunt their fun. After all, homosexuals (and others) have their tastes, too. And thus was born the concept of “sexual preference.”

What’s next? The Los Angeles Times wrote a 2013 article entitled, “Many researchers taking a different view of pedophilia”; just as with homosexuality (as the theory goes), pedophilia is “a deep-rooted predisposition that does not change.” It’s “as intrinsic as the next person’s heterosexuality,” the paper also related, quoting a sympathetically portrayed pedophile (comprehensive examination of the matter here).

So now the idea is that kids can have “fun” and preferences, too, and are, as sex “researcher” Alfred Kinsey taught, “sexual from birth.”

The moral of this story is that unmoored from Truth, tastes can lead to turpitude, fun to social failure, and hearts to Hell — and that ideas, truly, do have consequences.

Photo of Polish flag: Oleksii Liskonih/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.