What’s It Like to Be Gay in ... Poland?
SLATE
What’s It Like to Be Gay in ... Poland?
By Liam Hoare
(excerpt)
...But that’s as far as it goes. There is no legislation protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination in access to goods and services, or in any sphere of life outside of employment. There are no statutes concerning hate crimes or hate speech on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. There is no legal recognition of same-sex partnerships of any sort, not even in common law, nor are same-sex couples allowed to adopt.
For LGBTQ Poles, the Catholic Church is the biggest obstacle to social and political progress. As Polish journalist Slawomir Sierakowski recently noted in the New York Times, the Catholic Church in Poland is “omnipresent.” More than 90 percent of Poles belong to the church, and it enjoys “almost complete control over legislation concerning social issues” including sex ed in schools, abortion, and same-sex unions.
Yga Kostrzewa, an activist and spokeswoman for Lambda Warszawa, compared the presence of the Catholic Church in Poland to an octopus in terms of how it influences culture and society: the presence of a church in every town and village; its role in religious education in school; the way the government consults it about legislation, and so on. When there is a discussion of gay or trans issues on television, a member of an LGBTQ organisation like KPH or Lambda Warszawa will be invited to participate, but so will a Catholic priest.
One of the biggest issues for young LGBTQ people is sex ed in schools. “There is sex education in Polish schools but only on the most basic level, and often the person leading the class isn’t a proper teacher but someone from the church,” Kostrzewa told me. “When there is discussion of homosexuality in these lessons, it is usually to say that homosexuality is bad.” This begets a culture of ignorance and, when people leave school or discover better sources of information, confusion and tension....
MORE at http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/07/16/gay_in_poland_what_s_it_like.html
