Equality marches go national

The first example came from the very top. In June this year, Lech Kaczyński, the Mayor of Warsaw and now President elect, refused to grant permission for a solidarity march by homosexuals in the capital city.

The Mayor of Poznań, Ryszard Grobelny, recently followed in Kaczyński's footsteps. The parade took place in spite of the ban, and its opponents expressed their discontent by causing a fracas in the town, forcing the police to intervene. But instead of arresting the attackers, the police focused on the peaceful gay-rights protesters.

The events enraged human-rights organizations and last week the story repeated itself when the mayor of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz, decided that an equality parade could not take place in the main city square, in front of the monument for the Solidarity movement. City Hall claimed formal mistakes in the application form for the march had been made i.e. the name of a street had been misspelled.

The conflict has now spread all over the country with protests and counter-protests now being organized in Poznań, Rzeszów, Warsaw, Elblšg, Wrocław and many other towns and cities.