Poland: LGBT community must always fight for their rights
Pro-LGBT protesters in Warsaw on August 30, 2020. AP Photo / Czarek Sokolowski
Text by: Damien Simonart
3 min
Polish society and politicians are torn apart over the rights to be granted to the LGBT community.
The latter has been demonstrating for several months to have homosexual couples recognized in particular.
The conservative power, supported by the Church, however remains inflexible.
Publicity
Read more
From our correspondent in Warsaw,
In the big cities, there is generally a little more tolerance than in the provinces about the LGBT community.
But some towns in Poland, mainly in the south, have self-proclaimed "LGBT ideology free zones".
That is to say, they refuse the teaching of gender theory at school or that public money finances any project promoting values contrary to those of the Church.
The rights of LGBT people were
one of the main themes of the electoral campaign
during the last presidential election.
Andrzej Duda, the re-elected president fiercely attacked the LGBT community by declaring that it is not humans but an ideology.
To this day, same-sex couples are not recognized in Poland and as long as the conservatives are in power there is very little hope that this will change.
Exasperation of the LGBT community
However, many demonstrations have taken place in Warsaw recently, it is a sign of the total exasperation of the LGBT community.
There were even clashes with the police.
The latter made arrests and one of the activists, pseudonym "Margot" - officially a man but who asks to be presented as a woman -, spent several weeks in prison for having vandalized a van of a pro-association. life and assaulted his driver.
The protests that followed were aimed at supporting “Margot”.
But opposite, opponents of the LGBT community are also demonstrating, burning rainbow flags.
The tension is very high
between the two camps and it takes hundreds of police officers to separate them each time they take to the streets at the same time.
The Church, tolerant but not too much
The episcopate has just published a 27-page document in which it calls for tolerance towards LGBT people while criticizing their demands.
He says the Church cannot agree to broaden the definition of marriage, to grant the same rights and privileges to straight and same-sex marriages, or to allow same-sex couples to adopt children.
The episcopate even proposes to create consultation centers to allow those who wish to regain a “natural” sexual orientation.
This last proposal obviously provokes the fury of the LGBT community whose representatives stress that this kind of restorative therapy is banned in many countries.
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Poland
Andrzej Duda
LGBT +
On the same subject
Poland
In Poland, a "Rainbow Friday" against homophobia
Poland: anti-government demonstration after anti-LGBT remarks by President Duda
Poland
Łukasz, ex-priest and gay, in a city free of "LGBT ideology"