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US lectures cancelled after Walesa anti-gay rant

PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge 26.03.2013 11:18
Former president Lech Walesa says he has already lost 70,000 dollars due to cancelled US lectures following outspoken remarks about homosexuals.

photo:
photo: Lech Walesa Institute

“I'll show the world how effective this [homosexual] minority is: how it all looks, how they persecute and punish the majority,” Walesa told commercial radio station RMF FM on Tuesday.

Two appearances in the US have been cancelled after he stated on 1 March that homosexual MPs should be made to sit at the back of Poland's lower house of parliament, “or even behind a wall,” adding that “a minority cannot impose itself on the majority.”

In spite of criticism that followed in Poland and abroad, Walesa has remained unapologetic.

“Do they have to flaunt it in front of the majority?” he said, referring to annual gay pride marches in Warsaw and other cities.

“They should be modest, intimate, not showing off,” he argued.

Walesa has told the Warsaw Business Journal that the gay lobby has been attacking him unfairly.

“They started using their influence immediately because they build their strength on pain and resentment,” the former Solidarity leader claimed.

“How can they say I am a xenophobe or that I am fighting minorities?” he said.

Prosecutors have said they will not be trying to charge Walesa of hate crimes as Poland's constitution does not outlaw anti-gay speech.

Poland currently has one openly gay MP, Robert Biedron, and Europe's only transsexual member of parliament, Anna Grodzka - both members of the liberal Palikot's Movement. (nh/pg)

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