The management of the University of Warsaw will decide whether to pursue disciplinary proceedings against Deputy Justice Minister Marcin Warchoł for his remarks, which were critical of the promotion of LGBT on the Polish state-run TVP television channel. Warchoł, a lawyer and academic on sabbatical, said he believes that he could even be expelled from the university.
Warchoł had taken to Twitter to protest the Black Eyed Peas’ performance for TVP’s New Year’s Eve celebration after they appeared with rainbow-colored armbands and declared their support for the LGBT community. The minister tweeted, “Promotion of LGBT on TVP. Shame! This is not a New Year of our dreams but a new year of perversions.”
A staff member of the university’s law department, Dr. Jakub Urbanik, said that he has accused Warchoł of a disciplinary violation. He claims that the minister’s remarks are an example of hate speech, exclusion, and division which stand in conflict with the university’s code of conduct. He also said that a lawyer should never engage in discrimination and that to talk of LGBT as a perversion was “scientific nonsense.”
Speaking at a press conference, Warchoł said that he was in effect being threatened with expulsion from the university for expressing his beliefs. He accused his critics of crushing free speech; they preach love, tolerance, and freedom but then turn to oppression and exclusion to silence political dissent, he said, adding that he was not afraid of their hate but was afraid for millions of Poles who think as he does.
[pp id=60899]
The minister defended his remarks on the Black Eyed Peas’ performance by saying that intolerance and hate against people of different views are perverse. He added that LGBT ideologues demand respect for the constitution but engage in trying to break people’s consciences.
Warchoł’s political party, Solidarity Poland, also stated that it is proposing a legislative draft that would forbid the adoption of children by same-sex couples. Their leader, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, has already announced that he wants to ask Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who belongs to the Law and Justice (PiS) party, whether what happened during the New Year’s Eve celebration on TVP was a change in the government’s ideological stance and another retreat in the face of EU demands.
Ziobro and other of his faction colleagues have gone public in condemning the incident. Some have even suggested they would vote down the part of the state budget that dedicated PLN 2.7 billion (€580 million) to public media.
