Discriminaton against homosexuals in Poland

The author is a Polish homosexual and lawyer at the same time. He graduated with honours the Faculty of Law and Administration of Warsaw University in 2009. He specialises in penal law. It was the summer of 2006 when he read, totally by chance, about persecution of Polish homosexuals expressing their feelings PUBLICLY – by Polish Police. It was a landmark in his private chronicle of his life. In spring of 2007, within the framework of a university conservatory on penal law, he wrote a 50-paginal work on status of public homosexual behaviours in Polish system of infractions law.

Such PUBLIC (streets, department stores, parks, squares, railway stations etc.) homosexual expression as in case of heterosexual couples' one - that occurs in Polish public space on a mass scale (kisses, giving a hug, embraces, walk in partner's arms, sitting on one's partner's knee etc.) - is persecuted by formal and, especially, informal way whereas heterosexual expression that assumes the same form and the same intensity is totally free from any Polish Police's disturbance.

Of course, there is no usual presence of homosexual behaviours of this kind in Polish public space (except marches when it is tolerated) – thus, there is no opportunity to predict real reaction of officers. We know only about singular instances of detention, battery or failures to assist as a reaction to these singular instances of public homosexual expression that occurred after all.

The headquarters of Polish Police is not interested in the determination of the legal status of homosexual feelings' public expression in Poland; in reply to my inquiry on that topic that I had made in 2006 I was informed that they did not occupy oneself with giving legal advice.

I submit it here by reason of exhaustion all of my possibilities in the Polish field.

I hope that my extremely imperfect translation of my published Polish text, which is just the popular and shortened version for non-lawyers:

http://tnij.org/gc9v

renders the sense of it.

It is hard to say about real progress of Polish homosexuals' situation if such the basic, primary right - the right to love - is not respected in Poland by very Polish authorities.

application/msword TRANSLATION OF MY WORK.doc 185.00 kB
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Stanisław Woda, a lawyer, the criminal law specialist; Kraków, Polska
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