Polish ministers continue to fan flames of homophobic hate while comparing being queer to being a Nazi
Polish minister of justice Zbigniew Ziobro in Warsaw, Poland on 29 August 2017 (Mateusz Wlodarczyk/NurPhoto/Getty)
The justice minister of Poland is raging over the withdrawal of EU funding to ‘LGBT-free’ zones, claiming it would soon lead to farmers losing their subsidies.
Six towns that signed homophobic ‘LGBT-free’ pledges saw their requests for EU grants rejected last month on the grounds that they were no longer respecting “EU values and fundamental rights”.
Zbigniew Ziobro, who is also the country’s prosecutor general, hit back at the Commission with apoplectic rhetoric.
“The Polish government should… defend Polish governors against the illegal actions of the European Commission,” Ziobro declared on state TV on Monday (3 August).
“LGBT+ activists have strong EU financial backing, but despite their hooligan excesses, Commissioner Dalli won’t spare a thought for taking away their money,” EU Observer reported.
Although the towns in question were able to apply for grants of up to €150,000 through the EU scheme, the symbolic fines actually amounted to less than €25,000 each.
But for Ziobro, it was only the beginning. He claimed it would lead to the EU Commission one day “taking away [Polish] farmers’ subsidies or money for road infrastructure because Poland didn’t legalise homosexual marriage”.
The financial penalties to homophobic regions shouldn’t have come as a surprise, given the European Parliament’s strident and repeated condemnation of Poland’s ‘LGBT-free’ zones and thinly-veiled threats to reduce funding.
Yet Ziobro wasn’t the only one to react with outrage; several other members of Poland’s ruling party, PiS, also took to the airwaves to denounce the EU.
Janusz Kowalski, the PiS’ deputy minister for state assets, called for a law banning Polish state funds that “pay for any actions and institutions which are aimed at openly promoting LGBT+ ideology”.
“The entire territory of Poland should be designated as an LGBT+ ideology-free zone, since the Polish constitution clearly identifies a family as a relationship between a man and a woman,” he told Reuters.
Przemysław Czarnek, another PiS MP, went further.
“There’s no doubt, that LGBT+ ideology grew out of… the same root as Germany’s Hitlerian National Socialism, which was responsible for all the evil of World War II,” came the bizarre claim.
An estimated 10-15,000 gay men was murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
