Poland’s ambassador to Germany has lodged an official protest about content on a German government website portraying Polish Catholics as homophobes.
Ambassador Dariusz Pawłoś said the “stereotype”, which appeared on a website designed to help prevent the sexual abuse of minors, was “defamatory” and demanded that it be removed.
The Polish consulate in Munich took to Twitter to announce the official complaint against the material, which had been prepared for teachers.
The offending text, from a digital teacher training course on protecting children, was entitled “What’s up with Jaron?”
“The mother doesn’t suspect anything and the boy has not attempted to confide in her,” the text read. “He knows that the parents stick together and [his] mother admires his father, who told him that his mother comes from Poland and is a practicing Catholic, hates gays, and will reject him as a son. Other members of her family would do likewise.”
The Polish ambassador said the content is “dangerous” because it reinforces “anti-Polish stereotypes and derogatory generalisations that Poles hate gays.”
He reminded German authorities that “homosexuality was according to the German penal code illegal until 1969, in line with the law from Nazi times” and that it only fully became legal in 1994, whereas Poland had in 1932 lifted all penalties for homosexuality.
The ambassador also said that individuals imprisoned for homosexuality during the Nazi period remained in prison in Federal Germany after the war.
The contested content conveys the idea that the Catholic faith is based on hate because it portrays a practising Catholic as being automatically prejudiced against gays, the ambassador said, adding that he suspected this was a deliberate choice.
Poland wants such content removed from web pages of federal and state bodies, he said. He called on the German federal government’s minister for family and women’s issues, Lisa Paus, as well as the German Episcopate, to support his appeal.
The Polish ruling Conservatives (PiS) have been chastised by EU institutions and threatened with sanctions for not embracing the LGBTQI movement. Local authorities have, on the demands of some parents, taken actions to prevent LGBT sex education in schools.
Poland’s constitution, on the basis of which the country was admitted into the EU, defines marriage as being between man and woman and guarantees parents the right to raise their children in line with the parent’s values and beliefs.
