Poland gay rights march faces counter-demo
This Saturday’s March for Tolerance in the Polish city of Krakow will be picketed by a rightwing group with a history of hatred for gay people.
All-Polish Youth has said they will take to the streets to protest against homosexual rights.
“We will not permit the sodomites to enter the city’s main square,” a spokesman for the group said, according to Catholic World News.
The gay rights march is part of the 4th Krakow Festival of Gay and Lesbian Culture.
Last July thousands of people marched in the Polish capital of Warsaw to protest against increased homophobia in the country.
A counter parade by far-right groups was cancelled after pressure from politicians.
All-Polish Youth were until recently in alliance with the League of Polish Families, a political party who are junior partners in the country’s coalition government.
Roman Giertych, lead the League and is deputy Prime Minister of Poland as well as Education Minister.
He was reported last month to want to “prohibit the promotion of homosexuality and other deviance.”
A Ministry of Education press conference was told by junior Education minister Miroslaw Orzechowski that new laws will, “punish whomever promotes homosexuality or any other deviance of a sexual nature in educational establishments.”
It is thought punishment under the new law will include imprisonment.
Roman Giertych recently caused outrage at a meeting of EU education ministers when he openly criticised the so-called “homosexual propaganda” in schools and suggested a EU-wide ban.
He claimed to be speaking for the Polish government.
Last month his father, Maciej, 70, was censured by the European Parliament for anti-semitism.
It was the first time a rule that provides for penalties against MEPs for “exceptionally serious” violations of the Parliament’s principles of mutual respect had been used.
Giertych Snr is an MEP representing his son’s League of Polish Families.
He published a booklet last month with the EU logo on it in which he asserted that Jews are biologically different from other people and that they “prefer to voluntarily live separately from the communities which surround them.”
He believes that Jews should not be allowed to live in Europe.
