Czeslaw Walek: The LGBT rights that my generation fought for have not yet been enforced
Czeslaw, could you reminisce about what your life was like in 2009?
At that time I was the Deputy Minister for Human Rights Michael Kocáb and I first encountered the topic of LGBT rights. It was new to me because until then I had been dealing mainly with Roma issues.
At that time, the activists who pushed through the law on registered partnerships (adopted in 2006 - ed.) left the scene, and a new generation entered the scene, pointing out what was missing from the law - especially the adoption of a partner's child. Minister Kocáb, however, was very upset when he had to present the adoption to the government. I don't blame him; the subject was not close to his heart. I do, however, blame him for the fact that, instead of rejecting it outright, he dragged us through a series of colloquia, from which we were supposed to learn what society's opinion was on the subject. The first was human rights, and it was clear: the law must be changed. The second was with psychologists and was not so clear. But the third meeting was with priests. And that's when I got angry, because why should Catholic priests determine how society should develop?
There was the germ of my LGBT activism. I felt an inner debt that I hadn't done enough to help change the civil partnership law. I was determined to do more for LGBT rights when I left my position as deputy. Well, a few months later I did quit and Hana Kulhánková brought me to Prague Pride.
What were your ideas about your future then?
I thought that I would stay in the civil service and work on human rights in general, or that I would move to an international organisation. I didn't expect at all that I would jump into the non-profit and LGBT field. At that time I had no ideas about how society should treat LGBT people. Even though I was in a position at work where I was creating policies regarding the status of LGBT people, I didn't have clear ideas.
Then you gradually immersed yourself in advocacy for LGBT rights. What were the most significant milestones for you?
It was of course joining Prague Pride. Although at the time I thought I would organize one year of a local festival and go from there.
Then my year-long internship with Out&Equal in San Francisco in 2015 influenced me a lot. There I had an epiphany about equal marriage and realized that this is the way we should go in the Czech Republic. And I saw there how to work with business to become an LGBT ally.
How do you think Czech society has moved in relation to LGBT people in 15 years?
My subjective opinion is that our society has not moved anywhere. What has changed is the amount of information about LGBT issues that we dump on society. They are reaching more people than they used to and the quality of information available in the space is significantly higher. When we started, there weren't really any other out celebrities besides Jiri Pile and Janis Sidovsky. The general public couldn't identify with LGBT people. Today, there are many more publicly outed people, and identifying with LGBT people is easier for others. In 2011, which is when Prague Pride began, there was no data available on discrimination, on prejudicial violence. But I don't think the attitude of the average Czech has changed. The subliminal stereotypes against gays and lesbians were the same 15 years ago as they are now.
Czechs don't perceive the issue if it's not in their family. If they have an LGBT family member, they are more sensitive to these issues, and today they have the opportunity to get information and see other LGBT role models around them. That's probably the biggest change in 15 years.
Do you think they are the same? That's very sad. How do you deal with that?
Tough! Czech society has never been as homophobic as the Slovaks or the Poles. Even when there were attempts to stir up homophobic sentiments here, society didn't move. Which is positive on the one hand. In matters of values, we in the Czech Republic are in such a quagmire, and we're fine in it. We don't want to move either to the right or to the left, because the way we have it is fine. Thank God for the gifts that we are not prone to these phobias. But we just don't move.
How is life in the Czech Republic now?
What we wanted from the beginning was to normalize our lives. And today I see that the change has been quite successful. LGBT people are no longer ashamed to be themselves. As a result, our everyday life is better and our rights are improving. The society of politics will just eventually catch up to these changes. But it's taking longer than we would have imagined. I don't know if normalizing our lives is a relevant topic for the new generation of LGBT activists. But from our generation's perspective, it's exactly what we wanted.
When you mentioned politicians, which ones did you have the highest expectations of?
I had expectations of all the more liberal political parties and politicians! I'm naive. I expected marriage for all to pass in the last House of Commons when we had a CSSD and ANO government, which was still full of liberal people then. In the first year of Babiš's government we had a lot of supporters of equality - Robert Pelikán, Radka Maxová. But equal marriage was a new idea and Babiš was afraid of it. Now, on the other hand, with the current government, I expected nothing. After the elections I was completely depressed. And yet at least the partnership was approved. Politics is just fickle.
What was your biggest disappointment? Any bitter moments that you still carry with you today?
The last 15 years have been riddled with disappointments. Whenever you do something as an activist, you have five disappointments and one positive outcome. For me, the biggest disappointments always come from LGBT people themselves. When we started talking about marriage, a significant backlash came from middle-aged gay men who have the financial means to support the effort to change, but instead said, "I don't want this. I'm fine this way, and why bring the subject up? To this day, I still say that if anyone is going to cut us off, it's going to be older gay men. For example, MP Jiří Navrátil and his amendment (he removed joint adoptions and the name of marriage from the original marriage bill - ed.). I would expect these people to see past their own limitations and what is important to them is the welfare of the younger LGBT generation.
What do you think you will see in terms of LGBT rights?
I'm convinced I'll live to see marriage for all. And probably progress in trans rights, as the Constitutional Court has already ruled that mandatory castration must be abolished. And that may be it.
At the same time, I'm afraid we're going to see some shit. Probably not as bad as what we are seeing in Slovakia now, but there will be more and more individual attacks by politicians against us. And that is what makes me most nervous. I no longer have the strength to listen to these things and then fight against them. Against some stupid people who are making us a lift for their political careers. It's exhausted me for 15 years.
Aren't you afraid that some of the rights you've won will disappear again?
I see in the example of marriage for all that if you talk about things for a long time and it sinks in millimeter by millimeter, people get used to it and say, "Yeah, that's normal, let's change it."
Today, you're a middle-aged gay man yourself. How do you see the younger generation of queer activists?
The problem with our country is that the goals of my LGBT generation have not yet come to fruition. So the younger generation and its goals are on a waiting list. If we had succeeded in pushing marriage five years ago, what the youth of today are talking about might be normal for us. I'm convinced that a generational shift needs to happen in LGBT activism as well. Firstly because of the fatigue of the material, but mainly because life has moved on. The goals that young people want to achieve are different than what we have been fighting for.
