Homophobic demonstrations in Poland

A handful of homophobes headed by its political leader Jacek Kotula, a PiS councilor in the Podkarpackie regional council, protested on August 22 in the market square of the southeastern Polish city of Rzeszów against “LGBT terror.” PiS is Poland’s governing right-wing nationalist and populist party.

In an unrelated incident, Maciej Wąsik, a deputy minister of the Polish ministry of interior and administration, has tweeted that the man who made the Nazi salute during a far-right anti-LGBT+ demonstration in Katowice in southern Poland on August 21 has been arrested by the police and will face charges of public promotion of fascism and incitement to hatred.

Homophobia has been steadily on the rise in staunchly Catholic Poland. The Statistical Yearbook of the Republic of Poland 2014 shows that 92.9 percent of the country’s population is Roman Catholic. According to the latest annual Rainbow Map and Index, in terms of LGBT+ equality and rights, Poland is the worst in the EU. The LGBT+ community and supporters have been repeatedly attacked by clergy and politicians alike. Polish President Andrzej Duda has called the promotion of LGBT rights an “ideology” more destructive than communism. Marek Jędraszewski, the archbishop of Kraków, has claimed that Poland is under siege from a “rainbow plague” of gay rights campaigners.

(Rzeszów News, Onet)