New Polish minister for education and science thinks LGBT+ people ‘aren’t equal to normal people’. Terrifying
(Przemysław Czarnek/ Facebook)
Following a cabinet reshuffle, the new minister for education and science in Poland is a man who thinks LGBT+ people “aren’t equal to normal people”, and who compared the queer community to Nazis.
On Wednesday (30 September), Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki presented his newly reshuffled cabinet, giving the position of minister for education and science to Przemyslaw Czarnek.
In June this year, Czarnek said in a live TV broadcast: “Let us defend the family against this kind of corruption, depravity, absolutely immoral behaviour, let us defend us against the LGBT+ ideology and finish listening to this idiocy about human rights or equality.
“These people are not equal to normal people, let’s end this discussion.”
In the same broadcast, according to Polish News, he added: “Let’s end the discussion about these LGBT+ abominations, homosexuality, bisexuality, parades of equality.”
Czarnek, an MP for the ruling party Law and Justice (PiS), also previously compared being queer to being a Nazi.
He said: “There’s no doubt, that LGBT+ ideology grew out of… the same root as Germany’s Hitlerian National Socialism, which was responsible for all the evil of World War II.”
An estimated 10-15,000 gay men was murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Law and Justice (PiS) ruling party, on his 71st birthday. (Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty)
The leader of the viciously anti-LGBT+ Law and Justice party is now the deputy prime minister of Poland.
The cabinet reshuffle also led to Jaroslaw Kaczynski being named as deputy prime minister of Poland.
Kaczynski, 71, previously served as the country’s prime minister between 2006 to 2007 and later became the leader of ruling party PiS, which he co-founded in 2001.
As leader of the party, he has repeatedly positioned LGBT+ people as a threat to so-called traditional values in Poland.
In August, 2019, Kaczynski hit out at Pride parades, telling voters: “The hard offensive, this travelling theatre that is showing up in different cities to provoke and then cry… we are the ones who are harmed by this, it must be unmasked and discarded.”
He also promised to fully enforce the law to “regulate these matters”, but did not explain what he meant by this.
This rhetoric has resulted in more than 80 municipal or local governments proclaiming themselves to be “free from LGBT+ ideology”, a move strongly condemned by the European Parliament.
Following the reshuffle, there is only one woman in the Polish government. She is the minister for family and social policies.
