WorldNetDaily reports on an anti-gay-rights rally in Poland:
Touting red-and-white Polish flags, thousands of members of a Polish youth organization opposed to special rights for homosexuals marched through Warsaw today in a so-called “Normal Parade” in answer to a recent “gay pride” event in the city.
Speaking to the marchers, League of Polish Families leader and member of parliament Roman Geirtych said that as a predominantly Catholic country Poland could not build its future on “pederasts” but rather on the family.
Just the sort of thing to warm the hearts of anti-gay activists in the USA and elsewhere. It’s a pity, though, that WND doesn’t want to tell us more about the League of Polish Families or Roman Giertych (sic – WND spelt his name wrong). An article by Tomek Kitlinski from early last year gives a bit more background (includes one non-work-safe image):
A few months after it was founded, in October 2001, the League won 38 seats in the 460-member Polish parliament and 7.8 percent of the vote. The strong showing was largely thanks to the enthusiastic support of Radio Maryja, Poland’s hugely popular, nationalist Catholic broadcasting network, which claims 5 million regular listeners in a country of almost 39 million. The League did even better in the October 2002 local elections. The party now boasts a strong national organization and its own media.
The Stephen Roth Institute at Tel-Aviv University adds:
The League of Polish Families (Liga Polskich Rodzin – LPR),…whose members have frequently expressed antisemitic sentiments, more than doubled their share of the vote in the june 2004 European Parliament election, from 7 per cent in the 2001 national election, to 15 per cent.
The LPR won nine seats in the European Parliament…Among newly elected LPR MEPs is Wojciech Wierzejski, until recently a leader of the resurrected All-Polish Youth (Mlodziez Wszechpolska – MW).
Kitlinski describes the All-Polish Youth as the League’s “attack-dog militia”. Back to the Stephen Roth Institute:
The MW continues the tradition of the violent antisemitic youth organization of the same name, which was active in the 1920s and 1930s. Today it is composed largely of skinheads and tends to use violence against political opponents, notably gay and feminist groups. (For example, on 8 May 2004 football hooligans and activists of the MW and LPR violently attacked a peaceful gay rights march in Krakow.)
…It is worth mentioning that the radical antisemite Jedrzej Giertych, who wrote from the 1930s on, continues to have a profound influence on the ideology of today’s LPR and MW, a fact officially acknowledged by party leaders on numerous occasions. The LPR’s presidential candidate Professor Maciej Giertych is Jedrzej Giertych’s son, while the main spokesman of the LPR, Roman Giertych, is his grandson.
A summary of Jedrzej Giertych’s views can be seen here:
For Giertych Jews are a superpower, the foundation of influential connections encompassing the entire world, while its tool – money and indirect political stimuli. The solution of the Jewish problem is essential for Polish internal security; Poles are not in control of their own country and this is why honest Poles, according to Giertych, should follow the example of Germany. The Jewish problem can be solved by a “total emigration”, for example to the French colony Madagascar. Giertych obviously rejects Hitler’s concept of race and blood. Jews are a foreign body for him not because of their blood but because of their “Jewish sprit, alien to Polishness”…For him there existed “a wheel of historical Jewishness”. Jews, masons and secret associations were responsible for the fall of the first Republic, the partitions and the defeated uprisings.
On the other hand, the League was happy to receive a certain “conversion therapist” from the USA named Richard Cohen. A second article by Tomek Kitlinski (dating from the end of last year) gives details of Cohen’s presentation to the Polish parliament:
“The reason I ask for ten million dollars is because we need to create social organizations to help homosexuals to change. If you want to push legislation, somebody introduce a bill for the healing of homosexuality. That should really screw up homosexual activists.” Richard Cohen called Polish Parliament to reject the bill legalizing same-sex unions. In a country of twenty per cent unemployment and new poverty, Cohen pleaded for ten million dollars to fight homosexuality.
“The Promotion of Homosexuality in Social Life and Its Effects for the Human Person, Family and Culture” was the title of Cohen’s presentation in Polish Parliament where he was invited by the League of Polish Families that promotes heterosexism and xenophobia. The leader of the League of Polish Families, Roman Giertych (b. 1971) wants to change the penal code. He introduced a bill to the speaker of parliament to penalize (fine or even imprisonment) those who publically [sic] promote the change of the traditional definition of marriage as union between man and woman.
So, the right even of free speech can be counted among what WorldNetDaily calls “special rights for homosexuals”.
When it comes to European criticism of Israel, WorldNetDaily is usually happy to paint the continent as rife with anti-Semitism. But when real European neo-fascists turn against homosexuals, it seems the editorial line to go easy on thugs who support “normal” family values.
This man is normal.
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