Warsaw LGBT+ parade attended by government ministers for first time

Jun 17, 2024 | Law, Politics, Society

Around 20,000 people attended Saturday’s LGBT+ Equality Parade in Warsaw – including, for the first time, two members of the government.

“For me, it is a great honour that for the first time in history, the deputy prime minister took the Equality Parade under his honorary patronage,” said deputy prime minister Krzysztof Gawkowski, addressing participants at the start of the march.

He pledged that the government would fulfil the promises to strengthen LGBT+ rights it made after taking power in December following eight years of rule by the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, which led a vocal campaign against what it called “LGBT ideology”.

“We will get what we have been fighting for for eight years,” added Gawkowski. “We will deliver effective laws that give everyone the feeling that the state takes care of you, that it is equal for everyone and excludes no one.”

Equality minister Katarzyna Kotula – who, like Gawkowski comes from The Left (Lewica), the most socially liberal member of Poland’s ruling coalition – was also in attendance and told the crowd that a proposed law introducing same-sex civil partnerships was complete and awaiting government approval.

However, she noted that there still needed to be “key discussions” with The Left’s coalition partners about the issue, especially the centre-right Polish People’s Party (PSL), which is the most socially conservative element of the government.

Anna-Maria Żukowska, an MP from The Left, added that the introduction of civil partnerships would be “not the end but the beginning of the road to full equality for LGBT people”. She admitted, however, that The Left, as a junior member of the ruling coalition, did not have majority support for everything it wants to do.

This year’s Equality Parade was held under the slogan “The time for equality is now”. Its organisers put forward a set of 12 demands, including strengthening legal protection against hate speech and hate crimes and introducing full marriage equality.

Last month, Poland was ranked as the worst country in the European Union for LGBT+ people for the fifth consecutive year in the annual Rainbow Map published by ILGA-Europe, a Brussels-based NGO.

Saturday’s LGBT+ march, which is one of three taking place in Warsaw this month due to a dispute between the organisers, was also attended by the city’s mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, as it has been every year since he took office.

“I hope that all the demands that we have been talking about for many years will be implemented,” said Trzaskowski, opening the parade. City hall estimated that 20,000 people attended the march.

Trzaskowski is a deputy leader of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), the main party in the ruling coalition. Its leader, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, has also made clear his support for introducing civil partnerships as well as a simpler gender-recognition process for trans people.

No government figures from PO attended the march, though some of its MPs, including Michał Szczerba and Dorota Łoboda, did. As in previous years, many ambassadors were present, including US envoy Mark Brzezinski.


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Main image credit: Lewica/X

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