Parliament approves law banning “sexualisation of children” in Polish schools

Legislation banning organisations that “promote the sexualisation of children” from schools and preschools has been approved by parliament. The bill won the support of the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party and the far right.

Most opposition parties, however, were opposed and NGOs warn that the proposed law is a further attempt by the government to restrict sex education in schools.

Last year, parliament passed two similar bills, which the education minister, Przemysław Czarnek, said were necessary to prevent the “moral corruption” of children. But both were vetoed by President Andrzej Duda, who argued that the government had failed to obtain “social acceptance” for the measures.

The latest effort takes the form of a so-called citizen’s legislative initiative, meaning one proposed outside parliament and which must be supported by 100,000 public signatures to be considered.

The proposal was, however, also publicly backed by the senior PiS figures, including the party’s chairman, Jarosław Kaczyński, and Elżbieta Witek, the speaker of the Sejm, the more powerful lower house of parliament, as well as Czarnek.

The newly proposed law would introduce some of the same solutions included in the two previous attempts, such as a requirement for NGOs visiting schools to submit information on planned classes to the principal.

However, whereas previous versions would have empowered government-appointed education superintendents to decide if and when to bar certain organisations from schools, the new bill simply bans any group that “promotes issues related to the sexualisation of children”.

The legislation does not, though, define what this means. Opposition group The Left (Lewica) proposed amendments aiming, among other things, to define the term “sexualisation” and to impose the same obligations on churches or other religious associations, but the Sejm rejected them.

Meanwhile, an amendment proposed by the law’s original authors, extending the ban on “organisations promoting issues related to child sexualisation” to other forms of preschool education run by local authorities, was adopted.

The bill as a whole was then passed with the votes of 243 MPs – mostly from PiS and the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja) – with 202 MPs – mostly from the opposition groups Civic Coalition (KO), The Left and Polish Coalition (KP) – against.

“PiS is deliberately mixing up two concepts: ‘sexualisation’, which is perceiving another person through the prism of sexual attractiveness, and sex education, which means imparting knowledge about human sexuality,” Dorota Łoboda, a KO politician and education activist, told broadcaster TVN.

“There are no NGOs, community organisations, educators in Poland who have the sexualisation of children in their goals or in their activities. There is no such thing. This is a problem invented by Minister Czarnek and his group,” she added.

How groups in parliament voted on the proposed law to ban organisations that “promote the sexualisation of children” from schools. “Za” = for, “Precziw” = against.

Meanwhile, an association of 22 NGOs wrote in a statement, published by Amnesty International, that the new law would “make it more difficult for children and young people to access school enrichment activities”.

“The consequences will not be an increase in parents’ influence on what activities are organised in schools,” they wrote.

“Instead, there will be an increase in bureaucracy…[and] a reduction in the possibilities for organisations to cooperate with each other in developing the interests of pupils.”

Czarnek, however, rejects such accusations. “School is a place where teachers work…and if anyone else wants to work in a school then let them say what they want to teach,” he said in the Sejm during discussion of the bill.

“Do you know why [they] have a problem with that? Because they actually want to sexualise, they want to deprave, they want to distort the consciences and minds of children,” added the minister, who recently claimed that “brainwashing” by sex educators and “LGBT ideology” are responsible for a rise in attempted youth suicides.

Many conservative groups in Poland claim that LGBT groups aim to “sexualise children”, including through school sex education programmes.

The bill will now go to the opposition-controlled upper house of parliament, the Senate, which can delay it but ultimately not overrule the Sejm. It will then pass to President Duda, who can sign it into law or once again issue a veto.

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Main image credit: Adrianna Bochenek / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.