Polish lawmakers on Friday voted to
continue work on a bill that seeks to ban LGBT Pride parades and
other public gatherings that promote same-sex relationships.
The proposed legislation dubbed “Stop
LGBT” was submitted to parliament by conservative activists who
gathered the signatures of 140,000 eligible voters, the AP reported.
(100,000 signatures are needed to submit a legislative proposal to
parliament.)
After an emotional debate on Thursday,
the lower house of parliament voted to send the proposal to the
interior affairs commission.
Krzysztof Kasprzak, one of the
activists who presented the bill to lawmakers on Thursday, compared
the LGBT rights movement to Nazism.
Amnesty International criticized the
bill in a statement, saying it threatened the rights of LGBT people
in Poland.
“We call on Polish [lawmakers] to
recognize that love is love, and reject this hateful proposal which
is discriminatory to its core,” Amnesty International's Nils
Muiznieks said in a statement released before the vote.
“This initiative may not have
originated with the Polish government, but let us be clear: the
government's normalization of hateful rhetoric has created an
environment in which people feel empowered to spew bigotry,”
Muiznieks said.
Last year, Poland's conservative
president, Andrezj Duda, won reelection with a pledge to defend
children from “LGBT ideology.” He is opposed to same-sex marriage
and adoption by gay and lesbian couples. Poland's ruling Law and
Justice (PiS) party is also vocally opposed to LGBT rights.