A great demonstration in favour of life and the family was held in Warsaw on Sunday, 20 May. According to the police, there were less than a thousand participants, but according to the organizers there were well over three thousand by the end of the day. They flocked to the capital from all over Poland and even from abroad. They wished to express their own attachment to Christian values and respect for life from conception to natural death. One of the organizers of the demonstration, Lukasz Wrobel of the PRO Foundation, during an improvised meeting in front of the Polish Parliament, underlined the need to “urge Polish MPs to put an end to the discrimination against families, especially in terms of tax”. The representative of the Association of Christian Culture Slawomir Olejniczak, who had arrived in the Polish capital from Krakow, declared for his part that “the culture of death is represented by some homosexual circles and those favourable to abortion who aim to destroy families and rescind the right to life of unborn children”. Participants at the pro-family demonstration included the Minister of Education Roman Giertych, whose statements gave rise to the accusation of homophobia, as reported in the Italian press in recent days. These accusations have recently been repeated also by Amnesty International, which in its annual report cited examples of similar homophobic attitudes on the part of other members of the majority currently in government in Poland. An event of diametrically opposite view had however been held in Warsaw on the previous day, 19 May: the “Equality March”, organized in support of civil rights and equal opportunities irrespective of sexual orientation. In spite of some attempts to disrupt it, Saturday’s rally, which concluded the week for equality of rights held in Warsaw from 12 to 20 May, passed off peacefully.
