Nope, I’ve re-read your OP in detail, and I see no irony. I see a rant about a specific news item. (Of course, Americans don’t ‘get’ irony. There’s your cliche)
If you wanted to suggest that the specific situation in Poland is being extrapolated to cover Europe, in the same way as bible-belt ideas seem to have an influence across America, then maybe you should have, errrrr, given us some evidence? Everything you’ve shown suggests it’s a fairly provincial issue, which has caused no wider debate.
Well, it’s not like the USSR was exactly gay friendly, to put it mildly.
Is this what Bush really meant when he said, “Don’t forget Poland!”?
Poland is part of the “new Europe” that desparately wants to imitate the US, or at least all of the negative aspects of the US.
Now, Imasquare that doesn’t work as well, because it doesn’t make a necessary parallel. You can be a homophobe peacenik or a gay-friendly imperialist.
OTOH, Martin’s comment (and MH, we must make sure our irony is not so dry it chokes people), since it DOES bring up a reality that both the USA and the EU have more backwards components, does constitute a critique of the generalization “Europe = progressive, USA = retrograde”. Weakened by needing explanation, but a real critique nonetheless. It could have been equally used as counterpoint to the opposite cliché, “America = moral, Europe = decadent”, with just the right spin.
The thing is, if we are to defend with either of those paradigms, we must do so in an informed manner, not as an “article of faith”.