Poland’s education minister has condemned LGBT pride parades for “promoting deviancy” and said that those who do so “do not have the same rights” as “normal people”.
Przemysław Czarnek, a controversial ultra-conservative voice in Poland’s government, has made similar remarks about LGBT people in the past, though not since being appointed to the cabinet last year.
His words sparked condemnation from many commentators and opposition politicians, but they were applauded in parliament by Czarnek’s fellow MPs from the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.
In an interview with state broadcaster TVP, which is a government mouthpiece, Czarnek was asked for his views on the LGBT equality parade that took place in Warsaw at the weekend and was attended by thousands.
“You’ve seen the pictures from the parade, and this has nothing to do with equality,” he said. “Have you seen the people dressed in a weird way, a man dressed like a woman? Are they normal people in your opinion?”
“Poles know who is normal and who is not; they can see what is happening in the streets and what ‘tolerance’ is all about,” the minister continued. “What was happening there had nothing to do with tolerance and equality; it is fetishism and a distortion of equality and tolerance.”
“This is public moral corruption, an offence against morality,” added Czarnek. “All are equal before the law…[but] someone who promotes deviancy does not have the same public rights as a person who behaves in accordance with [accepted] standards.”
The minister was also asked about demands from the organisers of the parade for Polish schools to introduce “a language of inclusiveness” towards sexual and gender minorities.
“Only the Polish language is compulsory in Polish schools, not some language of inclusiveness or exclusiveness, ” he responded. “According to the Polish dictionary: satisfying one’s sex drive in a way that differs from the accepted norm is called perversion and deviancy.”
The head of the US embassy in Warsaw has warned that Poland is losing billions of dollars due to LGBT discrimination, pointing to a report on the issue.
His remarks prompted anger from the Polish right, including figures linked to the ruling party https://t.co/g5fEHFFSvr
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) June 22, 2021
The minister’s remarks quickly drew condemnation from various quarters. Speaking in parliament, left-wing MP Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk told Czarnek that “the only language you know is the language of hate, language that leads students, whom you should be protecting, to commit self-harm and suicide”.
Data from Campaign Against Homophobia (KPH), a Polish NGO, shows that 70% of LGBT teenagers in Poland have had suicidal thoughts. Last year, the commissioner for children’s rights warned that young LGBT people are “particularly vulnerable” to mental health problems.
However, as Dziemianowicz-Bąk read out quotes from Czarnek’s interview with TVP and spoke about young people committing suicide, MPs on the PiS benches drowned out her words with applause for their colleague.
PiS politicians applaud in support of Minister Czarnek’s contemptuous dismissal of the Pride parade as “having nothing to do with equality and tolerance”, as @AgaBak reminds them that demonising LGBT people leads to suicide and self-harm. https://t.co/N4iZSYcl1y
— Ben Stanley (@BDStanley) June 23, 2021
Katarzyna Lubnauer, leader of the liberal Modern (Nowoczesna) party, announced that they would be filing a motion for the education minister to be dismissed. “Czarnek should be forbidden from approaching children,” she wrote.
Czarnek has been a leading figure in the anti-LGBT campaign led by PiS in recent years. Before becoming a minister, he claimed that “LGBT ideology comes from the same roots as Nazism” and that its adherents “are not equal to normal people” so we should “stop listening to this idiocy about human rights or equality”.
Since joining the government, he has promised to fight the “totalitarian dictatorship of left-liberal views” that “dominates education”. Hundreds of academics in Poland and abroad have called for an international boycott of the minister due to his “homophobic, xenophobic and misogynistic views”.
Last year, another government minister proposed the banning of “LGBT ideology” and gender studies at Polish universities and schools. Subsequently, a legislative initiate to ban LGBT parades, which has been supported by parts of the Catholic church, was submitted to parliament.
At the same time, however, growing numbers of pride marches have been held around Poland, with rising attendance. Polls show increasing acceptance of LGBT people among the Polish public.
“People like Minister Czarnek will fade away [and] his views will be marginalised,” tweeted journalist Marta Bellon today. “But before that happens, with such words he will cause a lot of damage [and] that is the worst [thing].”
Main image credit: Max Bashyrov/Flickr (under CC BY-NC 2.0)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
