WARSAW, Poland (AP) – The United States ambassador held a U.S. flag excessive as he marched within the yearly Pride parade in Warsaw on Saturday, a transparent message of Washington’s opposition to discrimination in a rustic the place LGBTQ+ individuals are going through an uphill battle.
“America embraces equality,” Ambassador Mark Brzezinski stated, as he marched with greater than 30 different members of the U.S. Embassy and alongsides representatives from Canada, Austria and different Western international locations within the Equality Parade.
In latest years Western governments have been alarmed by a conservative authorities in Warsaw that depicts gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender folks as threats to the nation and its kids.
The participation of the U.S. ambassador despatched a transparent message to the federal government of Poland, a NATO member on the alliance’s japanese flank the place the United States has elevated its army presence since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine final 12 months.
Poland has for many years thought-about Washington its key guarantor of safety, however the significance of U.S. safety has solely grown with the struggle enjoying out throughout its border in Ukraine.
The U.S. can be seen as a guarantor of safety to the LGBTQ+ neighborhood, which a couple of years in the past was combating for the best of same-sex union or marriage, however lately had been extra involved a couple of local weather of hostility from the federal government and Catholic Church.
The colourful and joyful parade was a short second of celebration and aid for a neighborhood that has been criticized by elected leaders as a menace to nation’s conventional Catholic identification.
LGBTQ+ members have been particularly fearful due to elections this fall. The conservative nationalist ruling celebration, Law and Justice, has overtly criticized the neighborhood forward of previous elections, an try and mobilize its conservative base.
Brzezinski instructed The Associated Press that his embassy “has heard disturbing reports of an organized campaign targeting Poland’s LGBTQI+ community with hate, lies, and slander in an attempt to divide Polish society. These attempts to sow divisions only strengthen the hand of those who seek to weaken democracy.”
“We hope these reports are not true. We hope disagreement does not devolve into discrimination or worse,” Brzezinski stated. “Words matter. Hate masquerading as morality can play no productive role in our societies.”
As Polish President Andrzej Duda campaigned for reelection in 2020, he referred to as the promotion of LGBTQ+ rights an “ideology” extra damaging than communism. The training minister, who oversees colleges, was appointed to that job after saying LGBTQ+ members will not be equal to “normal people.”
Last summer time, the ruling celebration chief, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, mocked transgender folks, saying “we must protect ourselves from madness.”
And this spring, Poland’s commissioner for youngsters’s rights ordered an inspection of faculties that had been ranked as probably the most LGBT-friendly within the nation, saying he needed to verify principals had been checking their workers towards a pedophile registry.
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