Gay Poland News & Reports 2006

by Tom Hundley, Tribune foreign correspondent
Warsaw – When he was mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczynski established his credentials as a Roman Catholic social conservative by banning the city’s minuscule gay rights parade. So it came as no great surprise that as Poland’s newly elected president, Kaczynski would make his first foreign visit to the Vatican.

Perhaps more interesting is that his second trip abroad is to the United States.
Kaczynski met with President Bush in the Oval Office on Thursday, and the two discussed NATO, the European Union and Poland’s neighbors–Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. He arrives in Chicago on Friday for meetings with Polish-American leaders and a breakfast Saturday with Mayor Richard Daley.

Skeptical of EU
The visit to Washington underscores the importance Poland places on the trans-Atlantic alliance and signals Kaczynski’s deep skepticism of the European Union, especially in matters concerning Poland’s security and its testy relationship with Russia.
Poland’s ties with France and Germany suffered when Warsaw supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Its current deployment of nearly 1,500 troops to Iraq is the fifth largest after the U.S., Britain, South Korea and Italy.

The previous Polish government planned to withdraw the troops early this year, but after Kaczynski’s election in October, the new government decided to extend the deployment until the end of 2006 and perhaps longer, even though opinion polls show that 60 percent to 70 percent of the electorate want the troops home, and many commentators have complained that the Bush administration has done little to reward the Poles.

"We simply believe our mission in Iraq is not over yet," Kaczynski said in an interview with the Tribune last week. "Other NATO member states are still there. For example, Italians, who are there in greater numbers than us, are still there. And this is why we thought it would be good that the Poles stay to finish the mission."

He also suggested that the Bush administration could be doing more to support Poland’s efforts to modernize it military.
Kaczynski, 56, and his twin brother, Jaroslaw, came to power last fall by portraying themselves as the defenders of Poland’s conservative social values against the encroaching liberalism of Europe.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, older by 45 minutes, heads the Law and Justice party, which won September’s parliamentary elections. But instead of taking the top job as prime minister, Jaroslaw, who prefers to operate in the background, stepped aside in a bid to enhance his younger brother’s chances in the presidential elections the following month. The strategy worked.

With Lech as president, Jaroslaw as the power behind the government, and Law and Justice increasingly allied with some of Poland’s most reactionary fringe parties, the two former child actors now find themselves at the forefront of a budding "culture war" in Europe. Both Kaczynskis have been outspoken critics of gay rights, liberal abortion laws and the failure of the proposed EU constitution to refer to God or Europe’s Christian roots.

In his interview with the Tribune, President Kaczynski said his views were conservative but hardly out of the mainstream.
"Contrary to some people’s opinions, I am not a radical conservative myself. I accept change in this world. I accept the right of people to have their own opinions, equal rights of women and changes in social mores. However, that doesn’t mean that we should forsake family values," he said.

"Also contrary to what some people say, I am not for the discrimination against gays. They have the right to participate in public life. However, I am against the public display of their sexual preferences," he said. But many in Poland are concerned by the Kaczynski brothers’ faithful embrace of Roman Catholic teachings on social matters, especially on homosexuality and abortion. "This is a very reactionary, very conservative group, and they are scaring people in Europe," said Krzysztof Bobinski, director of Unia i Polska, a pro-European Union research center in Warsaw.

"Banning gay marches is something you do for political effect when you’re trying to build a constituency on the right. They are learning from the U.S.," Bobinski said. "But I think it’s dangerous and unhelpful if you say homosexuality is an illness that can be treated–then we’re back in Britain in the 1950s."

Suit against government
Earlier this week, a mother of three who is nearly blind sued the Polish government in the European Court of Human Rights over the refusal of doctors to terminate her third pregnancy even after they warned that giving birth would further damage her eyesight. The woman’s eyesight worsened after the birth of the child. The case is shaping up as a major test of Europe’s notion of human rights versus Poland’s idea of family values and Catholic values.

Kaczynski noted that "Poland is definitely more deeply Catholic than any other Catholic country in Europe" and said that as president, "I will, for sure, defend the fundamental value system in Poland."

LifeSite.net
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/mar/06031002.html

March 10, 2006

2
Polish President Heckled by Gay Rights Protestors in Berlin

by Gudrun Schultz
Berlin – Polish President Lech Kaczynski was targeted by gay rights activists during his visit to Berlin’s Humboldt University earlier this week, Deutsche Welle reported yesterday. Dozens of protesters delayed his speech by about half an hour, chanting “solidarity without exclusion” in reference to the slogan of the 1980’s labour movement that challenged communism in the country. The activists were protesting what they called his “homophobic policies.”

President Kaczynski banned a gay pride march in Warsaw last year, while he was mayor of the capital. The action outraged Polish gays. The president responded to the demonstrators by saying he did not believe homosexuality should be encouraged because gay relationships cannot produce children. “ I do not plan to persecute homosexuals or to hinder their careers,” he said. “But there is no reason to encourage it because it would mean that mankind would slowly die out.”

During his two-day visit to Germany, President Kaczynski had sharp criticism for the European Union, condemning it as an “artificial creation” with little power or authority. “ My opinion of the EU is the following: A super state which polarizes countries’ areas of competence but which at the same time is rather helpless because it only has a symbolic budget,” he told the German newspaper Die Welt.

He also said Europeans do not share one common outlook, despite EU reliance on that supposition. “ There is no European public opinion, rather national public opinions,” he said. Poland is considered one of the strongest of the pre-dominantly eastern-European nations to join the union in 2004. The Catholic nation’s opposition to gay unions and abortion rights has led to conflict with the EU in the two years since.

www.direland.com
Posted by Doug Ireland

March 31, 2006

3
Warsaw Police Attack Le Madame Club, Expel Occupants; Protest Rally called

Warsaw police have raided the renowned gay club and counter-cultural center Le Madame, and declared the club closed for good (for background and a description of Le Madame’s important role in Warsaw’s cultural life, see my article for Gay City News from March 29 on "The Siege of Le Madame." )

Lukasz Patucki, a gay activist with Poland’s Equity Foundation and one of the organizers of Warsaw Gay Pride, has e-mailed me from Warsaw to say that the police raid on the famous club occurred this morning at 6 AM Warsaw time. Le Madame had been occupied by hundreds of defenders since Monday, when police blockaded the club and ordered everyone to leave. Yesterday, the American actor John Malkovich had joined a press conference at the club to express his support. This morning, however, "We had too few people inside at that hour to protect the club," Patucki writes.

Police expelled all the 50-odd occupants of the club at the time of the raid , including Magda Mosiewicz, the chairwoman of the Polish Green Party (which now no longer has a headquarters, which was in Le Madame on its first floor). The police expulsion was very brutal, Patucki reports, with many beatings of the defending occupants, who gave passive resistance — some of them had chained themselves to pipes and railings inside the club. The expelled club defenders regrouped on the street, and chanted at the police, "TO NIE KONIEC, TO POCZATEK" ("It’s Not Over, It’s Just the Beginning." People continued to surround the club, and refused to leave. At 7 PM Warsaw time tonight, a protest rally and concert has been called, to take place in the street in front of Le Madame.

Two Polish political parties representing the minority left opposition in the Warsaw City Council (which is dominated by homophobic Polish President Lech Kaczynski’s ultra-conservative Law and Justice Party, which had ordered the club closed and the police raid) have called for an emergency meeting of the City Council to discuss the police closing of Le Madame; those parties are the Social Democrats and the Social Democratic Union. You can see photos of the police raid and the scene inside and outside the club by (clicking here (http://www.santi.moblog.pl/?view=1&page=1&_fo_id=-1) Gays, political dissidents, artists, and intellectuals arrived at Poland’s Le Madame Tuesday night to defend a 48-hour-truce negotiated to stem a police crackdown on this iconic symbol of Warsaw’s defiant counter-culture.

Pink News
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-1321.html

29 April 2006

4
Police forced to intervene in Polish gay rights march

by Benjamin Cohen
Riot police have been forced to intervene in a march for gay tolerance held in the Polish city of Krakow after counter demonstrations from members of far-right youth groups. Police officers reported that several arrests have taken place after members of the rightwing All Poland Youth Group threw stones and eggs at the participants of march for tolerance.

Over a thousand marchers protested with placards urging the public to "Stop homophobia" and "Don’t confuse a gay with a paedophile." Those from the All Poland Youth Group held up banners saying, “"Stop deviation". Some chanted, "Lesbians and gays, all of Poland is laughing at you". Gay rights campaigners argue that since the ultra-Conservative Law and Justice Party came to power last September that the rights of gay people have been eroded. Prime Minister, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz recently claimed that homosexuality is unnatural.

Last May, Mr Kaczynski, as mayor of the Polish capital, refused to issue a permit for a Gay Pride parade. A short while later he issued a permit for a “normality parade,” which was denounced by the International Lesbian and Gay Association as a “demonstration whose main objective was an incitation to hate and intolerance toward LGBT people.” In an open letter to EU leaders in June, ILGA noted that violence against LGBT people in Poland increased after the “normality parade.” In addition, a coalition of LGBT groups issued a statement calling on the president and prime minister to speak against anti-gay hatred.

”People who hold high political positions in the Polish government cannot pretend that there is no problem with hatred towards homosexuals in Poland,” the groups said.

From: "Tomasz Kitlinski" <tkitlinski@yahoo.com>

April 30, 2006

5
Poland’s Gay Parade Attacked

by Tomek Kitlinski and Pawel Leszkowicz
On April 28, 2006 a gay parade “March of Toleration” was attacked in Cracow, Poland. Youth activists of the parliamentary party League of Polish Families threw stones, eggs, bottles, and slurs at peaceful lgbt demonstrators. The parade was headed by the Campaign Against Homophobia, Poland’s biggest gay organization. Former deputy prime minister, Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka, and representatives of Green and leftist parties participated in the “March of Toleration.” Gay activists from Germany and Sweden joined in.

Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka, 56, is a politician and feminist who supports gay rights. She served as minister for the equality of women and men, and deputy prime minister. When stones were pelted at the gay parade, she hid in the arms of Robert Biedron, 30, president of the Campaign Against Homopobia. The attackers were activists of the All-Polish Youth, militia of the League of Polish Families party who sit in Polish and European Parliaments alike. Attackers threw stones which they had pulled off the walls of the royal castle of Cracow. Two people were seriously, and several lightly wounded. Twelve attackers were arrested by the police.

The roots of the League of Polish Families are in Poland’s inter-war anti-Semitism. The grandfather of the leader, Roman Giertych, Jedrzej Giertych was an ultranationalist politician in the 1930s and author of a book “Towards Ending the Crisis” (1938), where he called for the expulsion of Jews from Poland. His father of the leader, Maciej Giertych, a League activist, publicly supports the religious conversion of gays from their homosexuality, and has translated the “Homosexuality and Hope” statement of the US Catholic Medical Association concerning "possibilities of change and the negative consequences associated with homosexual activity." Because of their rabid chauvinism, the books of Jedrzej and Maciej Giertych were withdrawn from Poland’s stand at the 2000 Frankfurt Book Fair.

The leader of the League of Polish Families, Roman Giertych, organized the xenophobic and homophobic All-Polish Youth. In the current Poland’s government Giertych is PM and minister of education. Roman Giertych headed in the “Parade of Normality” which marched in Warsaw on June 18, 2005, Poland’s heterocracy was endorsed. Organised by the All-Polish Youth, it was allowed by Warsaw’s mayor, Lech Kaczynski. It reflected the homophobic, misogynist and xenophobic fundamentalism of Poland today.

Open hatred as a political strategy is manifested also in the use of the offensive terms of “pederasta” (‘pederast’) and “pedal” (‘fag’) by the politicians of the League of Polish Families in the election campaign and recently during parliamentary debates and in the media. In the election campaign on June 10, 2005 just before the main news bulletin of the State TV an election advertisement of the League of Polish Families was aired where a young male supporter of the party said: “I have the courage to say that two pederasts are not man and wife.”

Poland’s far-righters are entering the mainstream. Lesbians and gays are depicted as abnormal, asocial and abject. Being queer is presented as a biological and cultural threat to the Polish nation: birth-rate, “natural law” marriage and family are jeopardized, norms are inverted, taboos are broken. The All-Polish Youth were joined in Cracow by the National Revival of Poland party who deny the Holocaust. The National Revival of Poland devised a campaign “Zakaz pedalowania” (‘Ban the fag’).

The attack in Cracow topped Polish news. Poland’s media presented it as clash of equally valid sides. The most popular news bulletin Fakty of TVN interviewed the All-Polish Youth and presented their homophobic opinions uncritically. The daily Rzeczpospolita titled its front-page report “Eggs and stones in the name of the tradition” and wrote: “Nation-supporters and participants of the March of Toleration – two competing marches – marched at the same time the streets of Cracow. ‘Fags, out of Cracow,’ shouted the former, ‘Freedom, equality, toleration,’ replied the defenders of the rights of sexual minorities.” The broadsheet Rzeczpospolita quoted another slur of the All-Polish Youth: “Pederasts and dykes, all Poland laughs at you.” The fundamentalist newspaper Nasz Dziennik called the Cracow event “two marches, two worlds”. According to Nasz Dziennik, the All-Polish Youth “warned that organizations promoting homosexual behavior demand first the acceptance of their proclivities. Later they will call for the privileges belonging to families and adoption of children.”

Poland is going far-right. The League of Polish Families is very influential in the government of homophobic party Law and Justice which won Poland’s parliamentary elections in 2005. The party is fiercely anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-modern, pro-“traditional family” and pro-death penalty.

The victorious party is headed by identical twins, Lech and closeted gay Jaroslaw Kaczynski. As mayor of Poland’s capital Warsaw, Lech Kaczynski banned Poland’s gay pride. In the election campaign, on September 21, 2005, Jaroslaw Kaczynski said that homosexuals must not be teachers. In an interview for a weekly Ozon, Jaroslaw Kaczynski said “The affirmation of homosexuality will lead civilization to fall. We can’t agree to it.” The Law and Justice Party of the twins called gay parades “cluttering up” the public space of Poland, “infesting it with weeds.”

Just after the new government was sworn in, on November 19, 2005, the police stormed the gay Parade of Equality in Poznan. Sixty-five gay and lesbian demonstrators were arrested. Deputy PM and minister of interior, Ludwik Dorn, expressed his “recognition to the police” for brutality towards a peaceful demonstration of lesbians and gays On November 19, 2005, the police cordoned off the hundreds of lgbt activists who gathered together in the heart of the city of Poznan. Skinheads of the All-Polish Youth swarmed around, pelted eggs and shouted at the activists: “Fags to gas,” “We’ll do to you what Hitler did to Jews.”

Under the rule of the Kaczynskis homophobia is rampant. On March 31, 2006, the police raided and shut down Le Madame club in Warsaw, popular with gays and lesbians. When mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczynski repeatedly rebuked the club and refused to meet with its owner and gay activist, a black Pole Krystian Legierski.

Because of his homosexuality, Polish authorities aim to expel from Poland a refugee, Vladimir Sukhtsin, Russian dissident who protested Russia’s military actions in Chechnya. He went into hiding in Warsaw. German daily Die Zeit commented: “The decision about the expulsion of Sukhtsin falls at the time when the Polish society is manically busy with homosexuality. President Kaczynski conducted his election struggle at the cost of minorities; his poll results rose when he banned the gay parade with a pithy justification that it would make the city traffic difficult. He allowed the ‘Parade of Normality’ of skinheads freely.”

May 10, 2006

6
Warsaw stages gay pride parade despite opposition-see video

Despite the homophobic violence against the Krakow parade in April 2006, Warsaw nevertheless went ahead with its parade defying threats from conservative hooligans and opposition from the President of Poland. 6000 foreign supporters came to support the Warsaw LGBT parade which occurred without major incident. For a video of the event see: Video of Warsaw Gay Pride 2006

Tomek Kitlinski, Poland
tomek1a@yahoo.com

July 2006

7
Poland’s homophobic power is rising

President Lech Kaczynski appointed his twin brother as Prime Minister. They are both ultraconservative. The new PM’s inaugural address reiterated his phobias: he is anti-gay, anti-foreigner, anti-modern. Majoritarian tone resonated in the speech: Kaczynski presented the Catholic Church as repository of “the only universal value system.” He argued twice that Poland must be independent of European morality, mores. “Marriage is a union of a man and a woman,” repeated Poland’s new Prime Minister.

Under the leadership of the Kaczynskis the impact of anti-Semitic and homophobic party in the ruling coalition, the League of Polish Families, is very strong. The leader of this far-right party, Roman Giertych, is Poland’s deputy PM and Minister of Education. His grandfather, Jedrzej Giertych, was an ultranationalist politician in the 1930s and author of a book “Towards Ending the Crisis” (1938), where he called for the expulsion of Jews from Poland. The League and its militia, the All-Polish Youth, are spreading xeno- and homophobia.

The League of Polish Families’ second in command, Wojciech Wierzejski, is responsible for hate speech against sexual minorities, calling gays “pederasts,” “deviants,” “pedophiles.” The League’s militia, the All-Polish Youth violently attacks gay prides – with rocks, stones, acid and abominable slur “To gas!” The All-Polish Youth has a long history of anti-Semitism and is now proud of having supported the disgraceful practice of numerus clausus and bench ghetto at Poland’s universities between the world wars. Roman Giertych reactivated the All-Polish Youth and led the “Parade of Normality” on the streets of Warsaw where skinheads were presented as model Poles.

Before Warsaw’s Parade of Equality on June 10, 2006, the League’s Vice Chairman, Wojciech Wierzejski, said: “gay by definition is a coward, so when German politicians get a number of baton-hits, then they will not come again.” The 24-year old German, Rene, who participated in the Parade of Equality, was arrested in Warsaw on June 10, 2006 during the Parade and has been detained ever since; more on the arrest of Rene in English and German at www.queerberlin.tk, and in German: „Deutscher seit vier Wochen in polnischem Knast” http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,426033,00.html

“One of the members of Giertych’s party announced on television that ‘truncheons are waiting for the participants in the gay pride parade.’ Three weeks ago the chief rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, was roundly beaten up, and there is no need for a police lineup to confirm that the attackers of a rabbi are the attackers of a homosexual” (Yossi Sarid in “Haarets”).

The show promotes sexual diversity as crucial part of democratic culture, painfully lacking in Poland today.In Poland Catholicism is turned into an ideology, mainstream media support Bush, Polish soldiers with their chaplains are sent to Iraq. Poland’s new government is very strongly nationalist. Poland for Poles, women to kitchens, gays to hell are the rules. Abortion is banned in this country and women are vulnerable to unemployment and poverty. Gays are cursed on the streets, in parliament and government, and in the media.

Under the leadership of the Kaczynskis and their coalition partner, the League of Polish Families, xeno- and homophobia are on the rise. Tomek Kitlinski participated in Poland’s gay campaign “Let them see us.” He published two Polish-language books: on xenophobia "The Stranger is within us" and, with Pawel Leszkowicz, on Poland’s homosexuality and homophobia "Milosc i demokracja. Reflections on the Homosexual Question in Poland" (with an extensive English summary).

"Tomasz Kitlinski" <tkitlinski@yahoo.com>

22 July 2006

8
Gay news from Poland–Homophobia of Poland’s new government

by Tomek Kitlinski
Poland’s homophobic power is rising: President Lech Kaczynski appointed his twin brother as Prime Minister. They are both ultraconservative. The new PM’s inaugural address reiterated his phobias: he is anti-gay, anti-foreigner, anti-modern. Majoritarian tone resonated in the speech: Kaczynski presented the Catholic Church as repository of “the only universal value system.” He argued twice that Poland must be independent of European morality, mores. “Marriage is a union of a man and a woman,” repeated Poland’s new Prime Minister.

Under the leadership of the Kaczynskis the impact of anti-Semitic and homophobic party in the ruling coalition, the League of Polish Families, is very strong. The leader of this far-right party, Roman Giertych, is Poland’s deputy PM and Minister of Education. His grandfather, Jedrzej Giertych, was an ultranationalist politician in the 1930s and author of a book “Towards Ending the Crisis” (1938), where he called for the expulsion of Jews from Poland. The League and its militia, the All-Polish Youth, are spreading xeno- and homophobia.

The League of Polish Families’ second in command, Wojciech Wierzejski, is responsible for hate speech against sexual minorities, calling gays “pederasts,” “deviants,” “pedophiles.” The League’s militia, the All-Polish Youth violently attacks gay prides – with rocks, stones, acid and abominable slur “To gas!” The All-Polish Youth has a long history of anti-Semitism and is now proud of having supported the disgraceful practice of numerus clausus and bench ghetto at Poland’s universities between the world wars. Roman Giertych reactivated the All-Polish Youth and led the “Parade of Normality” on the streets of Warsaw where skinheads were presented as model Poles. Before Warsaw’s Parade of Equality on June 10, 2006, the League’s Vice Chairman, Wojciech Wierzejski, said: “gay by definition is a coward, so when German politicians get a number of baton-hits, then they will not come again.”

The 24-year old German, Rene, who participated in the Parade of Equality, was arrested in Warsaw on June 10, 2006 during the Parade and has been detained ever since; more on the arrest of Rene in English and German at www.queerberlin.tk and in German: „Deutscher seit vier Wochen in polnischem Knast” http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,426033,00.html

“One of the members of Giertych’s party announced on television that ‘truncheons are waiting for the participants in the gay pride parade.’ Three weeks ago the chief rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, was roundly beaten up, and there is no need for a police lineup to confirm that the attackers of a rabbi are the attackers of a homosexual” (Yossi Sarid in “Haarets”).

There is more and more resistance to Giertych as Minister of Education in Poland: students and pupils mobilize against his phobic ideology. Also, activists and artists protest against the League of Polish Families that has often called for the censorship of contemporary art. In 1994 a young Gdansk woman artist, Dorota Nieznalska, was sued by the League and sentenced to half a year of, as the judge had it, “restriction of freedom.” Nieznalska’s works are currently on display in the exhibition “Love and Democracy” at Gdansk’s Center for Contemporary Art. The show promotes sexual diversity as crucial part of democratic culture, painfully lacking in Poland today.

In Poland Catholicism is turned into an ideology, mainstream media support Bush, Polish soldiers with their chaplains are sent to Iraq. Poland’s new government is very strongly nationalist. Poland for Poles, women to kitchens, gays to hell are the rules. Abortion is banned in this country and women are vulnerable to unemployment and poverty. Gays are cursed on the streets, in parliament and government, and in the media.

Under the leadership of the Kaczynskis and their coalition partner, the League of Polish Families, xeno- and homophobia are on the rise.

Doug Ireland
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2006/08/polish_gays_to_.html

August 24, 2006

9
Polish gays to sue Ruling party over homophobic slurs

by Doug Ireland
Polish gays are fighting back against the notoriously homophobic Polish government: they are going to sue the ruling Law and Justice Party over two new incidents of homophobic propaganda.

In one incident, Pawel Zyzak, editor in chief of a party magazine, Right Turn!, wrote that gays are “animals” and were “the emissaries of Satan sent to destroy the Catholic Church.” (Poland is the most Catholic country in Europe.) At the same time, in the northern city of Koscierzyna, a leading Law and Justice member of parliament who is also a member of the party’s governing council, Waldemar Bonkowski, placed a large, homophobic banner on the wall of the local party headquarters. “Today it’s gays and lesbians — what’s next, zoophilia? Is that liberty and democracy? No, that’s syphilisation! Our Polish pope [the late John Paul II] is looking down from the sky and asking, Whither goest thou, Poland?” the banner read.

Well-known gay activist Lukasz Palucki told me, “I’m working with lawyers to prepare a lawsuit against the Law and Justice Party under Section 212 and 216 of Polish criminal law for these two hate-filled statements.” Those sections of the law prohibit hate speech and incitement to discrimination. “Even though the party is trying to control Poland’s courts and judges, and even though a lawsuit is expensive, we will do it,” Palucki added.

The right-wing, nationalist Law and Justice Party, which came to power in elections last fall, is headed by the ultra-homophobic Kaczynski brothers. Lech Kaczynski is Poland’s president, and last month he named his identical twin brother Jaroslav as the country’s prime minister. The Kaczynskis brought into their coalition government the notoriously homophobic League of Polish Families, a Catholic extremist party whose leader, Roman Giertych, was appointed minister of education. In June, the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning the new Polish regime’s homophobia, and specifically denounced the League, whose leaders "incite people to hatred and violence" against gay people, said the resolution. Prime Minister Jaroslav Kaczynski has announced his intention to seek a law banning gays from teaching in the schools.

After the country’s leading daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, gave prominent coverage to the two latest incidents of unabashed queer-baiting by the Kaczynskis‘ party, the incident became a media event. A vice-president of the Law and Justice Party, Tadeusz Cymanskii, said of the homo-hating banner erected by his colleague Bonkowski, “I fully agree with my colleague. We have to stop expansion of gay movements — and we will!”

Gay activist Palucki, one of the organizers of this year’s successful Warsaw Gay Pride March, explained that “the Polish word in Bonkowski’s banner, ‘syfilizacja’ (syphilization) is a word of his own invention made by combining syphilis and civilization. He also can’t even speak good Polish — ‘zoophilia’ in Polish should be written ‘zoofile,’ but he wrote ‘zoofilisci.’ We’re dealing here with an uneducated cretin.”

The homophobic article in the Law and Justice party bulletin by Zyzak, Michal Rolecki of the Web site GayPoland.pl told me, “was pseudo-theological nonsense — it really means the author should see a psychiatrist.”

In a related development, Polish police announced that, after a three-month investigation, they have arrested the man who knifed an activist whose name had appeared on a hit-list published by the neo-nazi Blood and Honor website. The website targeted lesbian and gay activists as “enemies of the white race” and called for their assassination, providing photographs, names and addresses.

During this year’s Warsaw Gay Pride March, members of the Law and Justice Party’s youth division, the All-Polish Youth — a thuggish strong-arm group, largely composed of skinheads, which has been responsible for many violent attacks on gay events, and many of whose members are also members of Blood and Honor — were observed taking photographs of participants in the Pride March. Gay activists suspected that the photos would have wound up on the Blood and Honor website. The police said that the 24-year-old Blood and Honor member arrested in the stabbing of the activist had confessed to the crime. As a result of the police investigation, the hit-list of gays and lesbians was taken down from the website–at least for the moment.

Also, Warsaw city authorities announced earlier this month that they would refused any request for a subsidy for the city’s annual Gay Pride March after newspapers reported that Pride organizers planned to seek financial help from the city on the grounds that the march helps promote tourism, and constituted a boon to the Warsaw‘s hotels, restaurants, and bars. Over 1000 foreigners came to Warsaw in June to join in the Pride March — but Miroslaw Kochalski, a spokesman for the mayor, said the march was “immoral and a danger to the inhabitants of Warsaw,” and that no request for a subsidy would be considered.

Gay.com
http://uk.gay.com/headlines/10313

31 August 2006

10
Poland’s PM spins an odd gay-friendly fable

Faced with raised eyebrows in Brussels, Poland’s prime minister is furiously back peddling and spinning a laughable fable of a gay-friendly Poland that’s been an unfortunate victim of bad press. Jaroslaw Kaczynsky is the leader of the ruling Law and Justice Party and took over as prime minister last month. He’s caused understandable consternation in Brussels by inviting two fringe parties to join the government.

One of the parties is anti-European, while the other, the League of Polish families is ultra homophobic, anti-Semitic and Catholic fundamentalist. Earlier this year, in reference to the gay pride march, the League’s Wojciech Wierzejski, a front-bench member of Parliament stated; “If the deviants will start demonstrating, they need to be bashed with a thick club.” While “allowing” this year’s Warsaw gay march, city authorities also gave official approval to an anti-gay march staged by the League of Polish Families, and along the same route, as the Gay Pride March.

It appeared that the right-wing Warsaw city government set up a potentially violent confrontation by authorising the two marches in the same place at the same time. Despite such undeniable facts, Poland’s prime minister invited the world to visit his country and revel in its gay clubs, artists and thriving gay press. Mr Kaczynsky said: "Please do not believe in the myth of an anti-Semitic, homophobic, xenophobic Poland. Please come to Poland." He neglected to mention that he banned two gay rights marches while mayor of Warsaw.

Mr Kaczynsky is a devout Roman Catholic with an identical twin brother, Lech, who is the current president. They are widely, and unsurprisingly known as The Terrible Twins. While avoiding his country’s terrible human rights record, the prime minister championed Poland’s appparent sexual tolerance, noting that the country legalised homosexual acts in 1932, many years before other countries in western Europe. So why is Mr Kaczynsky suddenly bragging about his country’s throbbing gay scene and years of legal tolerance?

If they behave themselves, Poland’s set to become the largest recipient of union aid, and could receive £40 billion between next year and 2013. In the porn industry, such conflicting behaviour is known as ‘gay for pay’.

Pink News
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-2645.html

October 5, 2006

11
Polish Ministry will ‘‘not support cooperation of homosexuals organisations"

by James Phillips
The Polish Ministry has rejected a youth proposal from Polish LGBT organisation Campaign Against Homophobia with the words ‘‘the Ministry does not support actions that aim to propagate homosexual behaviour and such attitude among young people.’’

This decision violates article 13 of the Amsterdam treaty, which explicitly forbids the discrimination of sexual minorities in the European Union.

The homophobic rejection comes in relation to a European Union (EU) scheme, which the Polish LGBT group had applied. The European Youth programme is run by the European Commission and designed to facilitate cooperation across Europe between youth aged 18-25.
The youth programme is designed to be equally opened for all, but this Polish example shows this is certainly not the case.

The Polish campaign against homophobia had applied for the European Voluntary Service (EVS) which gives a young person the chance to spend up to 12 months in another country working as a volunteer. Decisions are made by national agencies which are in every member state of the EU. This means that decisions are made locally, they should however be in accordance with the general programme guidelines.

The Polish National Agency rejected the campaign against homophobia application stating: ‘‘the campaign is against the policy of raising children and youth, which is implemented by the Ministry. The policy of Ministry does not support actions that aim to propagate homosexual behaviour and such attitude among young people.’’

The policy of the Polish ministry ‘‘is not to support cooperation of homosexuals organisations." Homophobia in Poland will no doubt surprise few, yet this is the first time the Ministry has openly declared its homophobia, stating that they refuse in principle to support LGBT organisations.

This overt homophobia contradicts Poland’s supposed ‘official’ attitude against homosexuals. Prime-Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski on a trip to Brussels told the European Commission: "(Do) not to believe in the myth of Poland as an anti-Semitic, homophobic and xenophobic country… People with such preferences have full rights in Poland, there is no tradition in Poland of persecuting such people."

Posted by Doug Ireland
http://direland. typepad.com/ direland/ 2006/10/polands_ antigay.html

October 19, 2006

12
Poland’s anti-gay Prime Minister outed as the government continues to spew homo-hate

Poland’s homophobic Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski—the identical twin brother of Polish President Lech Kaczynski—was outed as a homosexual in major Polish media last week in the midst of a political crisis that threatened to cause his government’s downfall. Poland’s second-most important newspaper, Rzeczpolita, published documents some only recently declassified, and some that were leaked—from the files of the Polish Secret Service that discussed Prime Minister Kaczynski’s homosexuality. As part of an investigation, begun in 1992, of right-wing political parties that, the documents said, “could threaten democracy,” a Secret Service department then headed by Colonel Jan Lesiak reported, “It is advisable to establish if Jaroslaw Kaczynski remains in a long-term homosexual relationship and, if so, who his partner is.”

Jaroslaw Kaczynski was appointed prime minister in July 2006 by his brother, the president. Both Kaczynski brothers, known as the “Terrible Twins,” are notorious for their public homophobia, and Jaroslaw has proposed banning gays from teaching in the schools. “Now all Poland knows that the Polish Secret Service was looking for Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s boyfriend,” a noted gay activist, Lukasz Palucki, one of the organizers of this year’s successful Warsaw Gay Pride March, told Gay City News from Warsaw. The Secret Service documents discussing the current prime minister’s homosexuality were later published by the country’s leading daily, Wyborcza Gazeta, as well. TVN24, a commercial TV network, also ran a report.

Then, also last week, former President Lech Walesa repeated on Polish television a crack about the current prime minister’s homosexuality that he had made 13 years before—when, in an interview on the Polish public TV network TVP1, he had said that the Kaczynski twins had come to his birthday party, and that “Lech came with his wife and Jaroslaw came with his husband.” On October 14, appearing on Polish commercial TV network TVN’s “Teraz My” program, Walesa—asked by the program’s anchors, Tomasz Sekielski and Andrzej Morozowski, about what he had said about Jaroslaw in the much earlier broadcast, reiterated his remark.

“Jaroslaw Kaczynski was also on the same TVN broadcast this time, but he was very quiet!” Palucki told me. This double outing of Jaroslaw Kaczynski came just as the one-year-old Kaczynski government was in the middle of a political crisis that began last month, when the prime minister suddenly ousted the ultra-nationalist Samoobrona (Self Defense) Party—and its leader, Deputy Prime Minister and Agriculture Minister Andrzej Lepper—from the three-party governing coalition led by the Kaczynskis’ PiS (Law and Justice) Party.

Without the Self Defense Party, the government no longer had the votes to defeat a no-confidence motion in Parliament, which, if it passed, would have meant new elections. However, after secret negotiations, this past Monday Lepper was re-appointed to his previous posts and Self Defense rejoined the restored governing coalition, which is now only one vote short of a parliamentary majority. The hush-hush deal with Lepper’s Self-Defense appears to have forestalled snap elections that had been expected this coming November. Following corruption scandals, however, the Kaczynski government’s popularity has fallen to an all-time low in the polls, and their ultra-conservative coalition is now trailing the main opposition party, Civic Platform, which is also conservative, though much less homophobic.

Following the revelations of the Secret Service documents, knowledge of the prime minister’s homosexuality was so widespread that politicians were joking about it in public. At a press conference during the political crisis, ousted Deputy Prime Minister Lepper told a press conference, “I wanted to see Mr. Kaczynski, but he had no time for me. Who am I? Some girl who would like to date him? If he dates any!” Lepper’s pregnant jab at the prime minister’s sexuality caused an outburst of laughter among the assembled journalists. Up until last week, “Polish media haven’t been very open about Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s sexuality,” gay journalist Michal Rolecki, of the Web site Gay Poland.pl, told me from Warsaw. “I have heard it said there is a ‘conspiracy of indulgent silence.’ Some allusions have appeared now and then.”

For example, Rolecki related, “earlier this year, the well-known Polish journalist Mikolaj Kunica recorded an interview with Wojciech Jasinki, a government minister and long-time friend of Jaroslaw, for TVP-1’s Wiadomosc news program. Kunica was widely reported in the Polish press to have asked about their social life when they were younger. Jasinki said they liked to have a party—to dance and drink. Kunica then asked if they dated girls, to which Jasinki replied that he did, but ‘Jaroslaw—never.’” This segment of the interview was never broadcast. Marzena Paczuska, editor of the Wiadomosc program, ordered the segment on girls to be cut, but Kunica refused and was supported by Robert Kozak, the head of news at TVP-1, who overruled the decision. The matter then went to Maciej Grzywaczewski, the head of TVP-1, who supported Paczuska’s original decision. He then suspended Kunica and subsequently fired him, saying the material was ‘aggressive, full of emotion and anti-governmental.’”

Still, Rolecki told me, Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s homosexuality “has been quite obvious to the general public ever since Walesa’s original televised comment. But you must bear in mind that sex still remains a considerable taboo in Catholic Poland. Some three-quarters of Poles say that that sexuality is a private thing not to be discussed in public. For example, we have never had a sex scandal related to government, even though everyone knows that the president and the home secretary regularly visit female brothels.”

Prime Minister Kaczynski, 56, is a bachelor who still lives with his mother in a house filled with an extraordinarily large number of cats — and The Times of London reported after his brother appointed him prime minister that “the views of the new prime minister and the president are so similar that they often finish each other’s sentences. The only way to distinguish them is by a small mole to the left of Lech Kaczynski’s nose and the cat hairs on Jaroslav Kaczynski’s clothes.” Jaroslaw is considered the craftier of the two brothers, and the dominant political strategist. Known as “the Lesiak files,” the Secret Service documents discussing the current prime minister’s homosexuality date from a time when the Polish Secret Service was the direct heir of the old Communist secret police, and its personnel in the early ‘90s still consisted largely of people who had worked in the agency prior to the fall of the Communist regime in 1989. Walesa, who served as president from 1990 to 1995, was in office during these investigations of political parties commanded by Colonel Lesiak which, Rolecki said, “took place when Walesa decided to get rid of the Kaczynski brothers, who had been his counselors, from the presidential palace because they uninterruptedly plotted and set his other advisers against one another.”

“What remains unclear,” Rolecki added, “is who ordered the investigation and infiltration of the right-wing political parties,” which the Lesiak files indicated “could be planning a coup d’etat.”

“Was it Walesa?” asked Rolecki, “who was well aware of how unstable the Polish right wing is and how authoritarian the Kaczynskis can be? Was it the government at the time, which was a centrist government? Or was it just a natural course of events as the Secret Service relied on ex-Communist personnel who naturally felt the urge to spy on the right wing? I’m afraid we’ll have to wait until all relevant documents are declassified for the full answer.”

Even as Prime Minister Kaczynski’s homosexuality was being outed in the press and on television, senior officials of his government continued to spew homo-hate. On October 14, the vice minister of education, Miroslaw Orzechowski (right), was asked by an interviewer for the daily Wyborcza Gazeta about the firing of Miroslaw Sielatycki, director of the Polish National Teacher Training Center, dismissed in June for having distributed to schools a manual on how to teach tolerance, prepared by the Council of Europe (of which Poland is a member country). The manual included material on non-discrimination against homosexuals and the rights of same-sex couples.

“This is the most drastic form of lies—that two individuals of the same sex can have a relationship,” Orzechowski told the newspaper. “I mean, it does happen, but you cannot legalize it because it ruins our civilization.” Asked by the interviewer, “Where is the space, then, for tolerance of difference?” the vice minister replied, “Oh, the world used to manage without tolerance and it will keep on going without it. We cannot have a couple of maniacs deciding the fate of our civilization.” The manuals, which included teaching tolerance of homosexuality, he said, “have been locked up, and will not be distributed any further.”

In a separate interview four days earlier, the new head of the National Teacher Training Center, Teresa Lecka, had told Wyborcza Gazeta, “The school’s role is to teach the distinction between good and evil, between beauty and ugliness… The school must show the drama, the emptiness, and the degeneration that homosexual practices lead to… Active homosexuality is a practice that is contrary to human nature. Polish schools should prefer good patterns of behavior that lead to family relationships.” Teaching about homosexuality, she said, must show “the limits of freedom for young people.”

Both these senior Polish officials were appointed by the Kaczynzskis’ ultra-homophobic minister of education, Roman Giertych, head of the Catholic nationalist, gay-baiting, anti-Semitic League of Polish Families party, the third member of the Kaczynskis’ right-wing governing coalition. U.K. Gay News reported today that the government has introduced a new inheritance tax law that discriminates against same-sex couples.

Despite the officially encouraged climate of homophobia in Poland, the country’s gays continue to assert their identity. For example, Poland’s first-ever Queer Film Festival, entitled “A Million Different Loves”—a weeklong event that includes a conference on “The Politics of Body and Desire in Audio-Visual Culture”—opens in the city of Lodz on October 25. Gay-themed films from Turkey, Belgium, France, Germany, Norway, the Philippines, Canada, Austria, Hungary, and the U.S. will be among those shown at the festival, which is being held in cooperation with gay groups in Leipzig, Germany.

Gay Poland News & Reports 2006

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