Playing the homo-bogeyman card

In their new found zeal to get opt out amendments into the EU Lisbon Treaty currently going through the Polish Parliament, Lech, Jaroslaw Kaczynski and co have raised the specter that is haunting...well, not Europe, but the fantasies of the main opposition party – Brussels is going to force gay marriages on Poland!

Aaaaaaghhhh...gurgle...pop!

Despite voting, with only just over fifty against, for the first reading of the Lisbon Treaty Ratification Bill, the Polish parliament has rocked with bitter arguments over amendments tabled by the Law and Justice party, demanding British style opt outs from the Fundamental Rights Charter, which guarantees certain rights throughout the EU.

Law and Justice, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski – who has realised that his party have some power over the issue as the government needs some of his MPs to vote with them to get the bill through parliament and onto the table of the President – have also, rather bizarrely, demanded the preamble to the old Constitutional Treaty be put back in.

It was this preamble on universal European values which caused so much trouble to Brussels last time and has now been ditched by nervous Eurocrats and governments desperate to get the now renamed ‘Lisbon Treaty’ quietly through national legislators.

Party political broadcast on behalf of the lame duck party

Last night, President Lech Kaczynski went on two public TV channels (a very good argument for privatisation of both of them, if you ask me) and made what was, in essence, a party political broadcast in favour of the opposition. Against sentimental music from a 1970s Polish TV series, he warned, darkly, that the Lisbon Treaty would open up Poland to Germans wanting back property confiscated after WW II.

The Lisbon Treaty would also bring ‘homosexual marriages’ to Poland, says the Prez. As he said this a clip of video came on showing two men getting married (photo).

Unfortunately, it was a film of two Canadian men getting married, not Europeans. Oops! And one of the men has complained to the Polish ambassador in Canada about his image being used in anti-homosexual propaganda. Double oops!

PM Donald Tusk has called Kaczynski’s antics ‘anti-European’. Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski was in parliament this morning reading out bits of the treaty which guarantee that social legislation, such as abortion or gay marriage, will be left, as it is now, to national parliaments to decide.

But no matter – here is an issue where Law and Justice can consolidate its more nationalist electoral base and relive the good old days when they had some power over public life.

So the Kaczynskis playing the ‘gay card’ was pathetically predictable. All the more pathetic when you realise that the Lisbon Treaty, which governments signed back in December, was supported back then by one President Lech Kaczynski, who is now saying he will veto the bill if he thinks that Poland will lose its sovereignty over certain issues – such as banning gay civil unions.

So why support the treaty in the first place then, Lech?

The government has threatened new elections if Law and Justice continue to obstruct the bill. Law and Justice would be annihilated in such a poll. And today there was also a suggestion that a referendum would be called if the bill is blocked, a move supported by the Left Democrats – and this blog, for that matter. Should idiots such as the above be able to decide these things?