Poland’s First Elected President Homophobic
Lech Walesa, Poland’s communist-era democracy campaigner, said in a television on March 1 that he believed gay people had no right to sit on the front benches in parliament and, if there at all, should sit in the back “or even behind a wall.” In other words, gays had no right to a prominent role in politics.
Although this former electrician is no longer active in Polish political life, he was asked about his views on civil partnerships and a new public gay rights campaign on the private Polish broadcaster TVN. The sixty-nine-year-old former shipyard worker replied: “They have to know that they are a minority and must adjust to smaller things. And not rise to the greatest heights…spoiling things for the others and taking them from the majority. A minority should not impose itself on the majority.” In 2000, at a campaign rally, he said that “gay people need medical treatment.”
Complaint Filed About His Remarks
Walesa has been accused of promoting a “propaganda of hate against a sexual minority. A national committee devoting to fighting hate speech and other crimes in Poland has filed a complaint with prosecutors in Gdansk. The leading Polish television journalist Monika Olejnik has accused Walesa of having “disgraced the Nobel Prize” that he received in 1983 as a result for organizing free non-Communist trade unions.
Adam Bielan, a conservative Polish member of the European parliament, said about Walesa: “ I am surprised that only now we are noticing that Walesa is not in control of what he says and that he has views that are far from being politically correct.”
A deputy speaker of parliament with the Democratic Left Alliance, Jerzy Wenderlich, commented : “from a human point of view his language was appalling. It was the statement of a troglodyte. Now nobody in their right mind will invite Lech Walesa as a moral authority, knowing what he said.”
Sam Dick, head of policy at Stonewall, said : “It’s sad that a human rights activist like Mr. Walesa sees fit to deny lesbian, gay and bisexual people the same basic rights he fought so long and hard for.”
Political Influence Has Waned
In 1995, Walesa was narrowly voted out of power in 1995, and his political influence waned. He has never advocated progressive social views. He now gives lectures internationally on his role in fighting communism and on issues of peace and democracy.
However, even in a Catholic country like Poland, there is a willingness to tackle gay rights. Polish voters in 2011 elected Poland’s first openly gay and first transsexual members of Parliament.
Yet, a recent poll in Poland revealed that sixty-nine percent of Poles still oppose gay marriage. Walesa is a devout Roman Catholic, father of eight, and affiliates with the Polish church that still maintains that homosexuality is deviant.