Adult Performer and Polish Émigré Kayden Gray Offers Solidarity with Country's LGBTQ+ Community

Popular adult performer and activist Kayden Gray currently resides in England, but the Polish native has been posting his solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community in his homeland this week by protesting outside the Polish embassy in London.

He posted this image on Instagram.

LGBTQ rights have come under attack in the country this summer. "Even by the often brutal standards of Polish politics, however, the demonization of gay men and lesbians by government officials over the past two years has been ferocious," wrote the New York Times on July 30. This statement is found in a report on how when reporting on how sections of the country declared themselves LGBTQ+ free and now face pushback from the EU for doing so. Since then Poland's President President Andrzej Duda attended a nationalist rally on August 16 when a gay flag was burned. In the recent electoral campaign, he "compared what he called LGBT 'ideology' to communist doctrine, sparking criticism at home and abroad," reports Reuters.

In the second of two posts, Gray writes:

"This was outside the Polish embassy, today, at the protest against the human rights violations being committed by the Polish government against the LGBTQ+. The image moved me to tears. I was a Polish kid once, too, and I would never want to go back to that time. It was a nightmare. I never felt safe. And, although I have a lot of love for myself now, I've had to learn it as an adult. I grew up all kinds of fucked up and ran away from the country to save my own sanity. None of it was because I'm queer. It was because of the hatred and violence being queer seems to invite. There are queer kids in Poland right now who are growing up and learning who they are. Kids who, from the very people who's job is to nurture and protect them, hear that they're not valid, not true and not important. 1/3 of the country has now officially become an LGBT-free zone, where queer people have no protection from violence. If the polish government isn't held accountable for what they're doing to those young people right now, those children will suffer the denial and erasure of their queer identities. They risk serious erosion of self-worth and destruction of mental wellbeing. There will be bullying. Street harassment. Arrests. Beatings. Addiction. Homelessness. Self-harm. Suicides. Those kids deserve better but there is nothing they can do just yet to fight for their own freedom. So it's up to us to stand up to bigotry and oppression, something most of us have experienced in abundance. Polish or not, join me and my fellow queer siblings next Tuesday at 13:30 outside the Polish embassy. If you really can't make it, please repost this to your story. And if you can, I need to see you there in the flesh. This is an emergency.

For more on Kayden Gray, visit his Instagram.