[ad_1]
TUCHÓW, Poland—Last 12 months, this small Polish city close to the japanese fringe of the European Union handed a decision proclaiming itself a “municipality free of LGBT ideology.” Last month, the EU responded by stripping funding for a program connecting Tuchów with a sister metropolis in France.
For EU authorities, Tuchów had violated a elementary proper to not be discriminated in opposition to primarily based on sexual orientation or gender, one thing protected in the bloc’s treaties and high-court case regulation. Some locals right here, in a stronghold of Poland’s newly re-elected President Andrzej Duda, don’t see it that method.
“It is more important for me and my colleagues, and maybe for residents, to act as guardians of our values, rather than selling ourselves for the 30 pieces of silver,” stated Tuchów metropolis councilor Mateusz Janiczek, a member of Poland’s conservative Law and Justice celebration, which backs Mr. Duda.
LGBT rights have turn into a flashpoint in a tradition battle between Europe’s West, which is changing into broadly extra socially liberal, and its East, which hews to extra conservative views. The social schism threatens EU unity and collective motion at a time of political and financial stress.
Politicians in nations of the East that had been behind the Iron Curtain in the course of the Cold War current themselves as defending traditions and Christian values. For many in the West, that strategy is at odds with elementary tenets of Western liberal democracy.
[ad_2]
Source hyperlink