Warsaw's 1st legal gay pride
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Thousands Celebrate Warsaw's First Legal Pride
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: May 19, 2007 - 5:00 pm ET
(Warsaw) More than five-thousand people marched Saturday in the first legally sanctioned LGBT pride parade in the Polish capital.
The marchers carried rainbow flags and some held banners reading "Stop homophobia".
The parade wound its way through central Warsaw under a heavy police presence, but most bystanders cheered and waved back at marchers.
The ultra-nationalist Catholic Youth Movement and the militant far-right All-Polish Youth staged a small counter demonstration nearby. Protestors carried signs reading "Homo go home."
Both groups had called on Warsaw Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz Walz to ban the parade. Friday she told Polish radio that she had no grounds for rejecting a parade permit application.
The Catholic Youth Movement had demanded the march be rejected because it promoted immorality.
Walz said the parade would pose no threat to morals and pointed to this month's ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that Warsaw's former Mayor Lech Kaczynski - now Poland's President - acted illegally and discriminatory in banning previous gay pride marches.
When he was mayor Kaczynski rejected parade applications from 2004 to 2006.
In 2005 dozens of militant youths were waiting as the marchers arrived at the Parliament buildings and pelted the crowd with eggs. Police struggled to try to regain order, but were vastly outnumbered.
Last year, the State Prosecutor's office issued a letter to prosecutors in the municipalities of Legnica, Wroclaw, Walbryzch, Opole and Jelenia Gora ordering in sweeping terms investigations into the conduct of "homosexuals" on unspecified allegations of "pedophilia."
Earlier this week Education Minister Roman Giertych unveiled draft legislation that would make it a criminal offence to "promote homosexual propaganda" in schools. (story)
If passed the measure would essentially censor all discussion of homosexuality in schools and other academic institutions. LGBT organizations would be barred from schools and "teachers who reveal their homosexuality will be fired from work."
Giertych's draft bill, however, does not say exactly would constitute promoting homosexuality.
Giertych defined it as "every action that is dependent on the public presentation of a certain belief with the intention of convincing others to that viewpoint." But critics say it is so vague it could lead to witch hunts.
365Gay.com 2007 -
This shows you can treat gays like shit and still get into the EU.
So much for the claims that you must a good human rights record to join. :whistle:
