The dispute about the rights of lesbian, Gay, Bi and TRANS-sexual reached in Poland a new peak: Two courts have declared the resolutions of two municipalities for “invalid”, in which this had for the strengthening of the role of the traditional family and against the alleged Encroachment of a “LGBT ideology” is pronounced. So you were followed by corresponding actions of the Polish speaker for civil rights Adam Bodnar.

Gerhard Gnauck

Political correspondent for Poland, the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, based in Warsaw.

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The administrative courts of the voivodships (districts) of upper Silesia and Mazovia there were in this week in similar Judgments, resolutions of the municipalities have exceeded their powers and against the constitutional ban on discrimination failed. The term “LGBT ideology” is blurred and controversial, and the consequences of such a decision could have a discriminatory effect.

The office Bodnars informed, that on Tuesday the judgment in upper Silesia, creating a precedent “can change the situation of LGBT persons in Poland significantly”. In the previous year, the capital city of Warsaw had adopted a “gay rights Charter”, in order to protect the rights of lesbian, Gay, Bi and TRANS – sexual. Then, about a hundred municipalities, circles and districts had adopted, almost all in the conservative South-East of Poland, decisions “against the LGBT ideology” or “for family rights”. President Andrzej Duda LGBT also made to the issue in the election campaign. Two high-ranking officials of the EU Commission, had recently warned in a letter to four districts prior to the discrimination of sexual minorities.

the twinning of cities on the Brink

Meanwhile, the dispute over the legal status of LGBT people as well as the relations between Polish municipalities and their partner cities in Germany, for instance. The Berlin district of Steglitz-Zehlendorf approximately a partnership with Poniatowa, a city in the Southeast of Poland, where in 2019, the city Council adopted a corresponding decision.

the mayor Cerstin Richter-Kotowski (CDU) provides for the development in Poland with concern, as she said on Thursday. The district office wrote a letter to the Partner in Poniatowa: We hope that the decision “be reconsidered and withdrawn”. The German-Polish relations were extremely important; “the more difficult it is for me to see which way Poland is gone,” said Richter-Kotowski of the “Berliner Zeitung”. You will not terminate the partnership but.