With the current election passed, Andrzej Duda has been elected once again, making him president for his second term running. However, many Poles were not happy with this decision. Duda has always been open about his controversial beliefs, lots of them regarding the LGBT community.
The president believes in the “norm” of a traditional nuclear family and has openly stated that “They (LGBT community) are trying to convince us they are people. But they are just an ideology”. The president is dehumanising people because they have decided who they want to love and it doesn’t fit in with their traditional gender roles.
Andrzej Duda has also stated that he is against same sex couples adopting children. He was supported by a controversial Polish anti-abortion and anti-LGBT activist Kaja Godek. She has previously made a statement on public television that she believes that “gay people want to adopt children because they want to molest and rape them”. Godek has always been very outspoken about her opinions and in what she believes is right. Many of them being supported by the president and many of them being unethical.
Seen by statistics, 64.6% of Poles are against gay marriage with over 73% of them also being against the adoption of children by gay couples. Same sex marriage in Poland is still illegal as it is only supported by a minority of the Polish population.
There are many influences of why this is such a huge problem in Poland however one of the biggest influences is religion. Poland has and will always be a highly religious country with most of the population being part of a Catholic or Christian religion and regularly attending church. So, when the Roman Catholic Archbishop described gay people as the “rainbow plague”, many people were outraged, however unfortunately most agreed with him.
Another thing that has outraged society is the creation of “LGBT-free zones”. These are towns around Poland where local officials have declared their towns “free of LGBT ideology” and so have no promotion of LGBT equality. Fortunately, the EU have released a statement that they will cut funding to six towns that declared themselves “LGBT-free zones”. They declared that their treaties ensure that every person in Europe is free to be who they are and free to love who they want. However still, as of January 2020, 1/3, of the entire country of Poland is an “LGBT free zone”
Many Poles that are against the basic right of same sex relationships have turned to more dangerous solutions. These start from verbal abuse and quickly turn into physical abuse towards not only members, but outspoken allies. Their dangerous methods escalate quickly with an example of an incident that occurred during a pride march, where a heterosexual couple brought dangerous explosives to the march with the intention of harming and likely killing those attending.
Members of the LGBT community are losing hope and so they are simply leaving their hometowns and some even the country where they can feel accepted and feel as if they do not have to hide anymore. A lot of Poles do not have the choice to leave, with a lot of young people not having the courage to come out and thus hiding from society.
We are living in a generation where change is happening however due to many outdated beliefs of older Poles, these things are not changing at the speed they are supposed to. Poland,said by many, has been called the most homophobic country in Europe, however the civilians of this country are not bothered by the shameful title that their beloved country has been given. Many don’t want change but change needs to happen.
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