Members of Poland's LGBT community say they are angry and afraid after President Andrzej Duda won re-election in a divisive campaign that cast their movement for equal rights as a dangerous "ideology" that threatens families in the deeply Roman Catholic country. Some activists say the homophobic rhetoric that emerged echoes policies in Russia under President Vladimir Putin, who signed a law in 2013 banning gay "propaganda" and where the constitution now bans same-sex marriage. They worry that Polish authorities are moving the country in that direction, and some already have left, fearing further discrimination. Others are vowing to stay and fight even harder for LGBT rights.

"There's always a price for this kind of narrative, and it's not the politicians who are paying the price. It is us," said Hubert Sobecki, head of Love Does Not Exclude, a Warsaw-based LGBT rights group. He said some have been driven to suicide, including students who were bullied at school. "It's been going on for years," he said in an interview Tuesday from an LGBT-friendly cafe in Warsaw where "We are with you" was written in chalk on the pavement outside, along with a heart filled in with colors of the rainbow. "It's a disaster. You can call it a humanitarian disaster, but that wouldn't even bring you close to the scope of human suffering those people are inflicting on us as a community," Sobecki said. "They call us 'ideology,' but it's not the ideology that is beaten up on the street."