Homosexuality in Latvian and Polish parliamentary debates 1994–2013: A historical approach to conflict in political discourse

This chapter discusses a historical perspective on the development of discursive conflict around homosexuality, with the amount of data to be handled remaining within the margin of manageability. It describes the ongoing academic debate on issues as conflict in political discourse, homosexuality as a topic of political debate – especially in Central and Eastern Europe – or the use of insults in spoken discourse. The chapter explains a narrative of homosexuality as both a subject of conflict and a means employed in conflict in Latvian and Polish parliamentary debates over a period of 20 years. Transitional terms of Latvian and Polish parliaments – the Supreme Council 1990–1993 and the first democratic Sejm 1991–1993, respectively – were hardly concerned with homosexuality. In official discourses of the Soviet Union – that Latvia was part of – and socialist Poland prior to democratic transition, sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular were taboo topics.