Poland urged to halt 'homophobia'
The European Parliament has called on Poland to stop public leaders inciting discrimination against homosexuals.
The resolution follows a statement by a deputy education minister that Poland was drafting a law to punish teachers who "promoted" homosexuality.
Poland's PM later said there would be no discrimination against gay teachers.
But MEPs repeated an appeal to EU anti-racism experts to look into "the emerging climate of racist, xenophobic and homophobic intolerance in Poland".
They asked the Polish authorities to "publicly condemn and take measures against declarations by public leaders inciting discrimination and hatred based on sexual orientation" and called on European Parliament leaders to send a fact-finding mission.
In a debate on the resolution on Wednesday, British gay MEP Michael Cashman said a country that had lived under repression should know the value of fundamental human rights.
Walk-out
"You should be teaching us about fundamental values and that is why we will not hesitate to defend human rights and human rights' defenders wherever they are," he said.
But Polish MEP Witold Tomczak said homosexuality was against the law of nature, and called on "so-called defenders of human rights" to tackle "discrimination against normal families".
"Every person has a right to life and deserves respect and help, including one who - lost and scarred - has given into homosexual tendencies.
"The solution is to help those who suffer and to provide them with the cure that they expect us to deliver."
Several Polish MEPs walked out of the chamber when attempts to prevent the debate failed.
Poland's deputy education minister, Miroslaw Orzechowski, said last month that a law banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools would be finished within weeks.
Human rights organisations said it would prevent lessons promoting tolerance towards homosexuals, and the dissemination of lifesaving information about Aids.
'Biologically useless'
"It was not just any person who made this dreadful statement, it was a member of the government, helping to contribute to a climate in which hatred is regarded as normal," said Dutch MEP Sophia in't Veld.
Employment and Equal Opportunities commissioner Vladimir Spidla warned that any measures banning discussion of homosexuality in schools would violate European law.
Mr Orzechowski is a member of the League of Polish Families, a junior partner in the coalition led by Mr Kaczynski's Law and Justice Party.
The AFP news agency reports that an MEP from the League of Polish Families, Maciej Giertych, has published a pamphlet stating that homosexuality is "biologically useless" and "reversible" as long as there is "the desire to become heterosexual and the spiritual motivation".
BBC
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MEPs rally round Geremek in war on Warsaw
MEPs from the major political groups rallied round Polish liberal deputy Bronislaw Geremek on Wednesday (25 April), after Polish authorities threatened to strip his MEP mandate in a spat over lustration - Warsaw's hunt for Communist-era collaborators.
MEPs from the conservative, socialist, liberal, green and far-left parties reacted with noisy applause in Strasbourg plenary after liberal group leader Graham Watson called on parliament to use "all legal means possible" to protect Mr Geremek, with the legal affairs committee set to look into the case in the coming weeks.
The events - described as "a rare moment of life in the chamber" by one liberal group official - come after Poland's National Elections Committee wrote to Mr Geremek, saying it will take away his MEP mandate if he does not submit a fresh lustration declaration in line with a new Polish law.
"To this imperative demand that urges me to subordinate to a humiliating procedure I have only one answer - I refuse," Mr Geremek fired back in a public statement, saying the law violates the Polish constitution on "respect for human dignity."
"[Lustration] threatens the freedom of speech, media freedom and the autonomy of the universities. It creates a kind of ministry of truth, or a police of memory," he added, calling for Poland's "democratic forces" to rally for the "protection of Poland's good name."
Poland's name has certainly taken a bashing in EU circles since the rightist-coalition government of the Kaczynski twins came to power in late 2005, with MEPs from the Kaczynskis' Law and Justice party heckling Mr Geremek's supporters in Strasbourg on Wednesday.
The Kaczynskis' lustration campaign is designed to usher in a Polish "Fourth Republic" by purging society and the post-Communist administration of collaborators with the old regime, recently targeting ex-Polish president, Wojciech Jaruzelski, on criminal charges.
Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski defended his policy in Brussels last week by saying that Spanish or Italian media which have called lustration a "witch-hunt" or a new "inquisition" do so "on the basis of a total lack of knowledge about Poland."
The lustration law is a hot topic inside Poland as well, with some popular support for exposing the hypocrisy of senior Roman Catholic clergy who passed information to secret police and for the Jaruzelski move - the ex-president is arguably responsible for up to 90 killings in the 1980s.
But Law and Justice's suggestion there is some kind of ex-Communist cabal secretly running the country and the extension of lustration to teachers and journalists is seen as ugly populism by others. "The 'Fourth Republic' idea is absurd," one senior Polish official told EUobserver.
Gambit could damage Kaczynskis
Mr Geremek's attack on lustration has the potential to further damage the Kaczynskis' reputation in the EU: as an ex-Polish foreign minister with strong Solidarnosc credentials, he has friends in high places. The professional historian is widely-respected in Brussels and was once tipped to be parliament president.
His attack also comes in the context of the Kaczynskis' ruling coalition partners, the League of Polish Families party, publishing anti-Semitic literature and tabling legislation to throw gay schoolteachers out of work or tighten further Poland's strict abortion laws.
But the Geremek gambit also takes him into uncharted legal territory, with one parliament contact saying the Polish lustration law works via an "automatism" that dictates Mr Geremek's mandate must be taken away. "We just don't know what will happen," the source said.
"It's a very complex, very delicate matter and it's too early to say anything," another European Parliament official said. "We've had cases before where national legislatures have withdrawn members, but never for such a reason. We'll have to see what the legal affairs committee says."
EU Observer
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How can a country go from communism to borderline fascism in only 15 years? And who put twins in power, i mean seriously wtf? I can only hope that Polish people are going to wake up and realize that the country is engaged on a very dangerous road.