The head of Poland's influential Roman Catholic church blasted the country's ruling social democrats on Tuesday for proposing to legalise homosexual partnerships and ease tough anti-abortion laws.
Cardinal Jozef Glemp
was commenting on plans by some social democrat lawmakers to draft bills, one
to give basic legal rights to gay couples and another to allow women to have
abortions if they are in a difficult personal situation.
'It is something very depressing for me, as it is something incompatible with
human nature,'' Glemp said before a meeting of Polish
bishops. ''I just can't stand men kissing. Maybe I'm old-fashioned.''
More than 90 percent of Poles say they are Catholic but church attendance is
much lower.
Gay groups complain that, although they suffer little legal discrimination,
many Poles are prejudiced and harbour stereotypes
that they are promiscuous and morally degenerate.
Prime Minister Leszek Miller's Democratic Left
Alliance (SLD) pledged to defend sexual minorities and give women safe access
to abortion before the 2001 general election.
But, after winning church backing for Poland's accession to the European Union,
the government left the issues alone during campaigning for a referendum last
June in which voters overwhelmingly voted to join the bloc next May.
A group of SLD deputies now want to meet those promises, but it remains unclear
if the party leadership backs the plan. The European Parliament has urged
Poland to ease its abortion laws.
'These will be very difficult decisions. I am not sure that in the end there
will be enough determination in the party to take them,'' said SLD pro-choice
deputy Izabela Sierakowska.
'If the Primate has anything against men who like kissing each other, I could
ask maliciously: 'Why did God create them that way?''' Sierakowska
said.
Glamp reiterated his vehement opposition to liberalising the anti-abortion law, saying terminations
''amounted to murder.''
Under a 1993 law, which ended abortions on demand allowed under communism,
terminations are allowed only when a pregnancy poses a threat to mother's life
or health, when it results from rape or incest, or the foetus
is damaged.
Although doctors performing illegal abortions face up to three years in jail,
local media have reported on a flourishing backstreet abortion industry.