Poland Catholic Church Under Fire Following Anti-LGBTQ+ Remarks

Pressure from Poland's LGBTQ+ community is mounting after anti-LGBTQ+ remarks were made by Poland's Catholic Church, Reuters reports. Speaking at a mass in Krakow to mark the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising in which Polish resistance fighters tried to expel the Nazis from Warsaw -- Archbishop Marek Jedraszewski compared the LGBTQ+ community to the red plague.

"Our land is no longer affected by the red plague, which does not mean that there is no new one that wants to control our souls, hearts and minds," he said, "not Marxist, Bolshevik, but born of the same spirit, neo-Marxist. Not red, but rainbow."

Archbishop Jedraszewski's comments are the latest in the ongoing hostility towards the LGBTQ+ community by the Law and Justice (PiS) party which has made LGBTQ+ discrimination a central part of the party's campaign ahead of the parliamentary elections this October.

Poland's far right came to power during it's 2015 election, a time when they focused their discrimination towards Muslim migrants who they believed were a threat to the nation, and has been emboldened by current ruling party's propaganda. Now with parliamentary elections due this fall, they've set their sights on LGBTQ+ rights.

Last month, over two dozen people were arrested after a violent far-right counter-protest of Bialystok's equality march.

Openly gay politician Robert Biedron called the comments "an incitement to crime, to hatred," saying "we already had such people, politicians who used smiliar words and that lead to huge slaughters, genocide,"

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