Following the pastoral letter of the Polish Episcopate issued just before Christmas regarding the condemnation of ?genderism,? the Parliamentary Group ?Stop Gender Ideology? was registered on January 8th 2014.
Its purpose is to implement legislation that will defend the rights of the traditional family and to fight against the negative impact of gender ideology on the Polish family and early education. The group includes a chairwoman, Beata Kempa and fifteen men, all from Solidarna Polska party. At the press conference on January 8th, Beata Kampa specified the group additionally intends ?to control public funds spent on promoting ?gender ideology?.? The group plans to organize 16 conferences throughout the country ?in the near future.? The sources of funding for these conferences remain unclear because the Polish Sejm does not financially support parliamentary groups.
Invited by the Parliamentary Group to Counteract the Atheisation of Poland, the nation?s most unspoken homophobic priest/professor Dariusz Oko will give a lecture ?Gender Ideology?Threat to Civilization? in Parliament on January 23, 2014. Oko, a participant of the 2007 WCF meeting in Warsaw, maintains that ?gender ideology is clearly aimed at the Catholic Church.? Apart from gay rights, he thus refers to the gender mainstreaming project conducted under the auspices of the EU.
Simultaneously, on January 8th, the vice-marshal of Parliament, Wanda Nowicka, issued an order to NIK (the ultimate financial controlling body) to monitor the Church?s use of 61 million zl (about 15 million euros) granted for various gender mainstreaming projects between 2010-2013. Nowicka suspects that the funds have not been used in accordance with their purpose. The funds were received by the church under the Human Capital project, while the church actively, as Nowicka says, ?not only prevented, but fought against this idea.?
After a series of scandals naming priests as pedophiles, the church desires to prove that the true sources of pedophilia lie in supposed gender ideology which ?erases differences between the sexes.? In tune with this notion, the action ?Stop Sexualization of Our Children? started this past Sunday in Wrocław churches, raising panic among parents who are told that children from 1-4 years of age are to be taught masturbation through gender mainstreaming projects.
The seriousness of the current situation lies not only in the gender-related panic that the Church and certain members of Parliament are spreading nationwide, but also in the steps that we foresee as following the current political and clerical upheaval. As witnessed in other countries including Uganda, Estonia, and Russia, such actions are used strategically to interweave the concepts of gender equality, homosexuality, threat to children, and pedophilia in the public?s mind, rendering the differences unrecognizable. The public is encouraged to view a pedophile and an LGBTQ person as one and the same. The anger that citizens understandably feel toward the threat of pedophilia is redirected by Church and State against LGBTQ people resulting in acts of violence and perhaps also changes in legislation.
Julia Massaro and Anita Marecka
