‘Free from faggots’ anti-gay banner unveiled at Legia Warsaw football match
Inside the Polish Army Stadium before the Ekstraklasa match between Legia Warsaw and WKS Slask Wroclawon at the Polish Army Stadium on August 21, 2011 in Warsaw, Poland. (Janusz Pawelec/EuroFootball/Getty)
A banner displaying the phrase “Warsaw free from faggots” was on display at a Legia Warsaw football match in the Polish capital.
The anti-gay banner was unfurled at a March 1 match between top-tier Polish football teams Legia Warsaw and Miedź Legnica.
Anti-gay banner unveiled at Legia Warsaw match
According to the Fare Network, which advocates for inclusivity in football, the banner was draped over the Legia fans’ stand during the match at Warsaw’s Polish Army Stadium.
The message reads, “Warsaw free from faggots,” followed by the crossed-out “LGBT” acronym.
Fare reports that the banner was not condemned by the football team or the Polish Football Association.
Two weeks ago the Mayor of #Warsaw signed a landmark declaration to support the LGBT+ community.
On Friday night Legia Warsaw fans declared their opposition with a huge banner that read “Warsaw free from faggots”.
So far not a word from the club or Polish FA in response… pic.twitter.com/xF0pwMXrgK
— Fare (@farenet) March 4, 2019
PinkNews has contacted the club for comment.
The banner comes just two weeks after Warsaw’s mayor Rafał Trzaskowski made a public declaration in support of LGBT+ rights
He said: “I will not tolerate incitement to hate on the basis of nationality, ethnicity, race, faith, age or sexual orientation.”
The mayor said he would “respond to any such cases” of homophobia and hit back at attempts “to mislead the public about my intentions [to support LGBT+ rights] and scandalous lies and slander.”
Poland is among Europe’s least tolerant countries for LGBT+ rights
Poland is ranked 38th among 49 European countries when it comes to LGBT+ rights, according to rights group ILGA-Europe’s annual Rainbow Europe index.
The country has little in the way of LGBT+ rights protections, with no recognition of same-sex relationships or adoption and no specific laws that outlaw hate crime.
Discrimination laws also do little to protect LGBT+ people, though the country’s Supreme Court has ruled that no person has the right to deny service to the LGBT+ community.
Intolerance towards LGBT+ people is rife under the country’s right-wing government, with schools forced to cancel inclusive education lessons in October after intervention from the education minister.
In August 2018, Poland’s right-wing Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak called a Pride march in Poznan a “parade of sodomites.”
Blaszczak dismissed the equal rights rally as “another parade of sodomites who are trying to impose their own interpretation of civic rights on other people.”
In July last year, the Minister for Internal Affairs Joachim Brudziński told the police to prosecute LGBT+ people, accusing them of “desecrating” the Polish coat of arms by featuring it on a Pride flag during a march.
