Call for Fermoy to scrap its twinning agreement in light of Polish town’s anti-
LGBT stance
A FERMOY county councillor has urged the local authority to cut its ties with a twinned Polish town unless it rows back on its controversial stance over LGBT rights.
Cllr Noel McCarthy has called on the Fermoy Municipal District Committee (MDC) to write to officials in Nowa Deba, which has been twinned with Fermoy since 2006, after the northern Polish town declared itself an ‘LGBT-Free Zone’.
The declaration has further highlighted the pernicious spread of homophobia in Poland, where almost 100 cities and towns, covering an area roughly equivalent to the size of Hungary, have declared themselves as being ‘free from LGBT ideology’.
An ‘Atlas of Hate’ map compiled by pro-LGBT activists, which has highlighted all of the areas adopting the controversial stance, has shown that approximately one-third of the country has now been declared an ‘LGBT-Free Zone’.
Cllr McCarthy has called on
Cork County Council to follow the example of a town in France that has also moved to sever its ties with Nowa Deba, pointing out that the local twinning committee was an agent of the council.
The Fermoy MDC was due to debate the issue at its next monthly meeting. While the meeting has been cancelled indefinitely, Cllr McCarthy said its first order of business when it resumes must be to write to Nowa Deba demanding an explanation on their anti-LGBT stance.
“I will be requesting the committee to write to the Nowa Deba municipal council and demand an answer. In the meantime, I want to suspend the town-twinning arrangement with them,” said Cllr McCarthy.
He said that if they do not reply, or fail to reverse their stance, the twinning agreement must be “immediately terminated”.
“What they have done, in my opinion, is a very backward step. No section of the community should be discriminated against. We must respect the rights of all people,” said Cllr McCarthy.
“The European Parliament condemned the Polish reaction, and I can tell you there are many people in the Fermoy area who were shocked by what the Polish municipal districts have done,” he added.