San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Thousands join gay pride parade, defying threats
WARSAW — 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’s LGBT rights movement is the target of a government campaign depicting it as a menace.
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.
In a first, the Polish capital’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.
“Not everyone has to go to the Equality Parade but everyone should respect minority rights,” Trzaskowski told the crowd from a parade float. “It’s really important for me that Warsaw be open, that Warsaw be tolerant.” While many Poles in Warsaw and other cities have increasingly grown supportive of gay rights, a backlash is also under way. In recent months, officials from Poland’s right-wing ruling party have portrayed the LGBT rights movement, citing in particular the movement’s calls for sex education that stresses tolerance of minorities, as a threat to families, children and society.
Law and Justice party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski recently called the LGBT rights movement a foreign import that threatened the nation’s identity. In conservative areas, town councils have been declaring their municipalities “LGBT free.”
On the eve of the parade, a far-right journalist on public television, Rafal Ziemkiewicz, sent chills down the spines of the LGBT community. In a tweet, he said “one must shoot at LGBT” people, before adding “not in the literal sense of course — but these are not people of good will or defenders of anybody’s rights, (the movement is) a new mutation of Bolsheviks and Nazis.”
Slava Melnyk, head of the Campaign Against Homophobia, warned about the possible consequences of such provocative language.
“His words are read by hundreds of thousands of people,” he said. “It’s possible that one of those people will take his word about shooting at LGBT people literally.”
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 honor her, they were assaulted.
Vanessa Gera is an Associated Press writer.