The Law and Justice Party, which is staunchly opposed to GLBT rights, has won a decisive victory in the Polish general election.
The ruling centre right Civic Platform party lost to its right wing challenger, with exit polls suggesting the Law and Justice Party had won 39% of the vote, and a projected 242 of the parliament’s 460 seats The Guardian reports.
The Law and Justice Party is staunchly opposed to GLBT rights, with party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski claiming previously that “the affirmation of homosexuality will lead to the downfall of civilization” – while some of the other party MPs comparing homosexuality to “paedophilia, necrophilia and zoophilia”
In 2013, a Law and Justice MP expressed his support for Uganda’s anti homosexual bill which at the time proposed the death penalty for those caught engaging in same sex sexual activity.
Poland already lags behind most of Europe on GLBT rights, with no legal recognition of same sex relationships and no recognition for transgender people.
Just last month, Polish President Andrzej Duda, a member of the Law and Justice Party dashed the hopes of transgender people, by vetoing a bill which would have granted them legal gender recognition.
The Law and Justice party’s sweeping victory has largely been fueled by a wave of anti European Union sentiment in Poland, political analysts say.
Article | Levi Joule.
