{"id":218025,"date":"2019-06-09T01:29:04","date_gmt":"2019-06-09T05:29:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=218025"},"modified":"2019-06-09T04:34:33","modified_gmt":"2019-06-09T08:34:33","slug":"mayor-joins-pride-parade-amid-polands-anti-lgbt-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/06\/09\/mayor-joins-pride-parade-amid-polands-anti-lgbt-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor joins pride parade amid Poland&#8217;s anti-LGBT campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"pl\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ParadaRowno%C5%9Bci?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ParadaRowno\u015bci<\/a> przesz\u0142a ulicami <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/warszawa?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@warszawa<\/a>. By\u0142o rado\u015bnie i kolorowo, dzi\u0119kuj\u0119 za mn\u00f3stwo pozytywnej energii! <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/WarszawaDlaWszystkich?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#WarszawaDlaWszystkich<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fot. Z. Sosnowska <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/yQFAw03plI\">pic.twitter.com\/yQFAw03plI<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Rafa\u0142 Trzaskowski (@trzaskowski_) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/trzaskowski_\/status\/1137421079536984064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 8, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>WARSAW, Poland \u2014 The largest gay pride parade in central and eastern Europe brought tens of thousands of people to the streets of Warsaw on Saturday at a time when Poland&#8217;s LGBT rights movement is the target of a government campaign depicting it as a threat.<\/p>\n<p>Diplomats from the United States, Canada and other Western countries continued a recent tradition of joining the festive Equality Parade to show support for a community experiencing leaps of progress and a backlash around the world.<\/p>\n<p>In a first, the Polish capital&#8217;s mayor also participated. Opening the parade, Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski noted that it is now common for cities across Europe to support LGBT pride marches.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot everyone has to go to the Equality Parade but everyone should respect minority rights,\u201d Trzaskowski told the crowd from a parade float. \u201cIt&#8217;s really important for me that Warsaw be open, that Warsaw be tolerant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>City Hall said some 47,000 people took part.<\/p>\n<p>While many Poles in Warsaw and other cities have increasingly grown supportive of gay rights, a backlash is also underway. In recent months, officials from Poland&#8217;s right-wing ruling party have portrayed the LGBT rights movement, citing in particular calls for sex education that stresses tolerance of minorities, as a threat to families, children and society.<\/p>\n<p>Law and Justice party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski recently called the movement a foreign import that threatened the nation&#8217;s identity. In conservative areas, town councils have been declaring their municipalities \u201cLGBT free.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And on the eve of the parade, a far-right journalist on public television, Rafal Ziemkiewicz, sent chills down the spines of the LGBT community.<\/p>\n<p>In a tweet, he said \u201cone must shoot at LGBT\u201d people, before adding \u201cnot in the literal sense of course \u2014 but these are not people of good will or defenders of anybody&#8217;s rights, (the movement is) a new mutation of Bolsheviks and Nazis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Slava Melnyk, head of the Campaign Against Homophobia, warned about the possible consequences of such provocative language.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHis words are read by hundreds of thousands of people,\u201d he said. \u201cIt&#8217;s possible that one of those people will take his word about shooting at LGBT people literally.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Uschi Pawlik, who was marching with her LGBT Christian group, Faith and Rainbow, described feeling excluded in the conservative and mostly Roman Catholic nation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe feel that the government has made a scapegoat of us. Many of us feel excluded by our own country and our own church,\u201d Pawlik, 40, said. \u201cSo it is painful, but many of us think this is a reason to fight, and not the moment to give up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hubert Sobecki, head of Love Does Not Exclude, a group seeking marriage equality, said the situation is particularly frightening for those young people struggling with their sexual identity. He said some are afraid to come out and some straight kids are being bullied because they are perceived as gay.<\/p>\n<p>Call centres have been working to prevent suicides, but they don&#8217;t always succeed, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Last month a transgender girl killed herself by jumping from a bridge in Warsaw. When a group of people went later with a rainbow flag to the bridge to honour her, they were assaulted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is lots of hate in the public media and by the ruling party, but you also have a growing movement of people realizing we are fighting for our lives,\u201d Sobecki said.<\/p>\n<p>LGBT rights became a key topic of public debate earlier this year when Trzaskowski, from the centrist opposition party Civic Platform, issued an LGBT rights declaration. In one point, it set out the city&#8217;s commitment to try and help find shelter for gay youth rejected by their parents. In another, he promised to incorporate World Health Organization guidelines on sex and tolerance education into Warsaw&#8217;s school system.<\/p>\n<p>Poland&#8217;s education minister, who was sworn in Tuesday, described the LGBT rights declaration as an attempt to groom children for pedophiles and said sex education is the responsibility of families only.<\/p>\n<p>By seizing on the issue, the ruling conservatives have managed to energize their base and divide the political opposition.<\/p>\n<p>Law and Justice won an overwhelming victory in elections to the European Parliament last month.<\/p>\n<p>Many in the opposition have concluded that supporting LGBT rights did not help them and are now seeking to back away from that issue ahead of national elections in the fall.<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere in the region, an estimated 10,000 people joined a peaceful pride parade in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius \u2014 a far cry from the first parade in 2008 that included brick throwing and mounted police using tear gas.<\/p>\n<p>Several thousand people also joined the 12th pride event in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, under the slogan \u201cDon&#8217;t give power to hatred.\u201d Gays and lesbians face widespread hostility in the Balkan country&#8217;s macho-dominated society, and opposition to their public events has been fierce despite anti-discrimination laws that protect their rights.<\/p>\n<p>In Warsaw, protesters blared loud church music as the parade passed by.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<p>Jari Tanner contributed from Helsinki and Veselin Toshkov from Sofia, Bulgaria.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>#ParadaRowno\u015bci przesz\u0142a ulicami @warszawa. By\u0142o rado\u015bnie i kolorowo, dzi\u0119kuj\u0119 za mn\u00f3stwo pozytywnej energii! #WarszawaDlaWszystkich Fot. Z. Sosnowska pic.twitter.com\/yQFAw03plI &mdash; Rafa\u0142 &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":218026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-vanessa-gera","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218025"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218085,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218025\/revisions\/218085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}