Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I raise with the Taoiseach the question of the homophobic and transphobic attacks being carried out by the ruling party in Poland, Law and Justice. Like the Hungarian regime, it has engaged in continuous attacks on LGBTQI+ people. The Polish President has described homosexuality as a foreign ideology that is "worse than communism". The Archbishop of Krakow has described it as "a rainbow plague that is worse than Bolshevism". There is a certain trend in terms of analogies. At a national level, there have been restrictions on the right of LGBTQ people to adopt, but the latest is a series of attacks at a regional level, whereby regional councils, overwhelmingly including the ruling party, Law and Justice, have passed resolutions declaring themselves so-called LGBT ideology-free zones. In reality, they mean LGBT-free zones, which means that for LGBTQI+ people who are inevitably still there and present, being out would represent a serious danger to their health and their lives, that danger effectively being State-sanctioned violence.

I want to send People Before Profit solidarity to LGBTQ+ activists in Poland and to socialists who are fighting against these attacks.

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