POLAND: Activists Launch Billboard Campaign For Civil Partnerships

Polish LGBT activists have launched a billboard campaign called Love Doesn't Exclude Us in Warsaw and Lodz to support their demand for a civil partnerships law. Campaign organizer Wojciech Szot writes us today:

The aim of the campaign is to draw attention to the fact that Poland has no civil partnerships law, and Polish legislation provides no regulations for same-sex couples. 
Today, Poland is the biggest European Union Member State in which same-sex couples are invisible for the law. The law ensures no legal protection to them, does not regulate their situation, takes in fact no account of their existence.

This is unfair. This is an exclusion - in many areas of life.



Poland is also one of the very few European countries where the authorities have not taken up any measures whatsoever in this area. One of the aims of our campaign is to show that legal frameworks for same-sex relationships are a European civilisational standard and that social evolution in this area has not bypassed Poland. Our law, however, does not follow the reality in this respect, and the authorities refrain from any dialogue with the society at large and with our interest group. “Love Does Not Exclude” is therefore an expression of this very pressing social need – the voice of those who are invisible to the law and ignored by politicians. For half a year now we’ve been hearing that a debate should be held in the Polish parliament, but will this happen before the parliamentary elections? Will the government and the opposition listen to their electorate?

Join their Facebook page here. Photos of the billboards in place can be found here.

MC 900 Foot Jeebus

It's not quite 900 feet, but the statue going up in Poland will be the world's biggest Jeebus. Why are they building it? For the MONEY, silly.

Although erected ostensibly to show gratitude to God, the town hopes having the massive statue will bring tourists into a community that has lain off the beaten track for most of its existence. "If we had opened a racetrack or a golf course here, tourists would have come only for the season. But with a statue of Jesus the season will last the whole year," a local official told Wprost, a weekly news magazine.

WARSAW: EuroPride Held For First Time In Eastern Europe

The 17th annual EuroPride took place in Warsaw, Poland today, the first time the traveling event has been staged in Eastern Europe. Approximately 2000 Polish riot police were on hand to protect marchers from far-right and Catholic extremists.

The parade, part of the EuroPride gay rights festival, is meant to give a boost to the fledgling gay rights movement in Poland. Gay rights were strongly repressed during the communist era, and gays and lesbians have struggled since communism fell 20 years ago for acceptance in a society still strongly influenced by the church. "We feel like they are 20 years behind the Netherlands," said Ad Bakker, a 39-year-old from Holland who traveled to Warsaw to show solidarity with Polish friends. "But the atmosphere is good and we hope that EuroPride will help." A Polish friend of his, Sebastian Blaszczyk, 36, said the situation in Poland "gets better and better every year," but the country still has far to go in accepting gays. An initial police estimate put the number of participants at 8,000.

Catholic groups opposing homosexuality distributed pamphlets to parade goers with an image of Jesus Christ saying: "I have not come to condemn but to redeem." They also held prayer vigils at local churches "in the intention of redeeming parade participants." The decision to hold Europride in Warsaw sparked controversy in deeply-Catholic Poland -- where gays have long complained of intolerance, and openly homophobic remarks by politicians are far from rare. "We started lobbying already in 2005 against all odds and amid a very unfriendly atmosphere towards gay rights in our country," said Adam Biskupiak of the Equality Foundation, the Polish group which is organising the rally.

Police arrested eight men for pelting the crowd with rocks and eggs. Unfortunately, among those attacked were my longtime friends Jerry and Martin, the latter of whom took a rock to the head. Jerry reports that Bibles were also thrown at them. Unswayed by the hatred, our heroes bought a hat to cover Martin's gash and continued on to Warsaw's bear dance party. Below, Martin displays his blood and egg-flecked shirt.

RELATED: Europride 2011 will be held in Rome.

RUSSIA: Anti-Gay President Of Poland Dies In Plane Crash With 96 Others

Poland has declared a week of mourning after President Lech Kaczynski and his wife were killed in a plane crash in western Russia this morning. All passengers and crew died in the crash. As mayor of Warsaw, Kaczynski had repeatedly banned gay pride marches and had been quoted as saying that same-sex marriage would bring about the destruction of the human race.

Russian state television reported that the Tu-154 jet crashed about a kilometer short of the runway on its fourth attempt to land in heavy fog at the Smolensk-Severnyi military airport, shortly before 11 a.m. Moscow time. Reports of the number killed in the crash varied. Polish officials put the figure at 88, while Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations said 97 had died and Russia's Investigative Committee said the total was 132. "We still cannot fully understand the scope of this tragedy and what it means for us in the future," said Foreign Ministry Spokesman Piotr Paszkowski. "Nothing like this has ever happened in Poland." "We can assume with great certainty that all persons on board have been killed." Passengers included the president and his wife as well as other top officials. SlawomirSkrzypek, president of the National Bank of Poland, was also on board. Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Pszkowski said that the army chief of staff and Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer were also on board the plane. The plane "clipped the tops of the trees, crashed and broke into pieces," the governor of the Smolensk region, Sergei Antufiev, told Rossiya-24 television news network by telephone. "There were no survivors."

In 2008 Kaczynski went on national Polish television to mock the same-sex wedding of two men in Canada. Unknown to him, however, one of the two men whose photos he ridiculed was internationally noted LGBT activist Brendan Fay. Kaczynski's move then backfired when Fay and his husband were brought to Poland and interviewed by national television, something local activists called the greatest visibility for LGBT rights there in many years.