I promised to myself not to write about politics as it raises my blood pressure. But I simply have to let it out this time, or I will not fall asleep (Note to myself: never check news just before going to bed).
I do not want to go now into details of Polish political scene, it should just be enough if I tell you that at this moment it is dominated by the coalition of ultra-right, ultra-catholic parties. And if I say ultra I mean ULTRA. To give you some flavor how bad it is I will just give you the names of the three parties that are forming the government right now: Law and Justice (this is a party from which both the president and the prime minister come from; as you also surely know they are twin brothers and their name means “duck”-ynski), Self-defense and League of Polish Families.
The hero of today’s post will be the leader of the last of these parties, Roman Giertych. On the 1st of March, speaking at an informal meeting of European education ministers in Heidelberg, Germany, he told reporters that “Europe needs changes” and that “abortion needs to be banned immediately”. He called abortion “a new form of barbarism,” and warned of the impending demise of Christian-based culture in Europe. He said: “a nation which kills its children is a nation without a future. A continent which kills its children will be settled by people who do not kill theirs.” He also criticized the European cultural scene, calling it the result of “unwise political correctness.” And also said that “homosexual propaganda must be limited so children will have the correct view of the family.” He continued “If we will not use all our power to strengthen the family, then as a continent there is not a future for us. We will be a continent settled by representatives of the Islamic world who care for the family” (link).
(BTW: Poland has one of the toughest laws on abortion, allowing pregnancy to be terminated only when it threatens the life or health of the mother, when the baby is likely to be permanently disabled or when pregnancy is the result of a crime, such as rape or incest. And even in these cases it is extremely difficult and basically impossible to find a doctor willing to conduct an abortion. The League of Polish Families wants to ban abortion even in these rare cases and the ruling Law and Justice party also wants to change the constitution to make a liberalization of the abortion law impossible in the future. As for the sample of the attitude of Polish government towards sexual minorities (and minorities in general) see the movie from the post tolerancja).
On March 6th, Giertych was called to meet with the prime minister (Jaroslaw Kaczynski) and there was even a chance that he will be asked to resign from his office (he is a minister of education) as regardless of his personal opinion he should still present the opinion of Polish government while representing it abroad (link). Obviously, he was not fired, as that would undermine the stability of anyway weak coalition of his party with the ruling Law and Justice party and could potentially lead to the collapse of the current government.
So what did Giertych do today? He presented a project that soon will be considered by Polish parliament, according to which if the headmaster of the school will allow for "a homosexual propaganda" in any form to be present in his/her school, he/she will get fired immediately for that. (link)