President of Poland, Andrzej Duda. (Sean Gallup/Getty)
Andrzej Duda, president of Poland, quoted one of the most homophobic popes in history during a campaign speech as a thinly-veiled excuse for his own rampant homophobia.
Duda is currently campaigning for reelection as president of Poland, and he has made his anti-LGBT+ views a large part of his platform.
In a “family charter” published last week, Duda pledged to “prohibit the propagation of this ideology” in public institutions, “defend the institution of marriage” as defined as a “relationship between a women and a man”, and in a recent speech compared “LGBT+ ideology” to Soviet Union-era communist indoctrination.
Campaigning in the city of Lublin in eastern Poland on Monday (June 15) the president said Polish pope John Paul II, one of the most homophobic popes in history, was the country’s “moral authority”.
He told attendees at the campaign rally that they must “survive this ideological hurricane, just as we have survived many others in our history”.
Some protesters came to the rally with rainbow Pride flags, but Duda hit back at them saying: “I can assure all of those standing here under rainbow flags, even though I stand under the white and red Polish and EU flags and even though our views may differ, that I will not allow that to stand in the way of respecting and accepting them, hearing their arguments.
“And I still will honour my duty to protect our children and rights of people.”
Andrzej Duda: European Parliament “violates God’s law” by supporting same-sex marriage.
Despite his claim of “respecting” those carrying Pride flags, Andrzej Duda went on to quote one of John Paul II’s anti-LGBT+ remarks.
“We may ask if another ideology of evil may not be in play,” he said.
“An ideology that aims to take advantage of human rights against man and family.”
“There are those who violate God’s law. I am thinking of the European Parliament applying pressure to make homosexual unions recognised as families.”
Pope John Paul II famously described LGBT+ rights advances such as same-sex marriage as a “new ideology of evil”.
In his 2005 book Memory and Identity, published the year he died, he wrote: “It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this [same-sex marriage] is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man.”
In 1986, John Paul II approved the release of a document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which said homosexuality “is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder”.
The homophobic former Pope was canonised as a saint in 2013.