page_title: Law and Justice
section_title: Gay rights
hierarchical_section_title: Law and Justice / Platform / Social policies / Gay rights
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Poland, LGBT ideology-free zones declared (as of end of January 2020) on a voivodeship, powiat or gmina level marked in dark red
context_page_description: Law and Justice is a national-conservative, Christian democratic and right-wing populist political party in Poland, a member of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party. With 198 seats in the Polish Sejm and 48 in the Senate, PiS is currently the largest political party in the Polish parliament. The current twenty-five PiS MEPs sit in the European Conservatives and Reformists Group in the European Parliament.
  The party was founded in 2001 by the Kaczyński twins, Lech and Jarosław, as a centrist and Christian democratic party. It was formed from part of the Solidarity Electoral Action, with the Christian democratic Centre Agreement forming the new party's core. The party won the 2005 election, while Lech Kaczyński won the presidency. Law and Justice formed a coalition with the Eurosceptic League of Polish Families and Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland. Jarosław served as Prime Minister, before calling elections in 2007, in which the party came in second to Civic Platform. In these elections PiS lost most of its moderate electorate but attracted voters from its former coalition members and then turned to nationalism and populism.
context_section_description: The party opposes LGBT rights, in particular same-sex marriages and any other form of legal recognition of same-sex couples.
  On 21 September 2005, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński said that "homosexuals should not be isolated, however they should not be school teachers for example. Active homosexuals surely not, in any case", but that homosexuals "should not be discriminated otherwise". He has also stated, "The affirmation of homosexuality will lead to the downfall of civilization. We can't agree to it". Lech Kaczynski, while mayor of Warsaw, refused authorization for a gay pride march; declaring that it would be obscene and offensive to other people's religious beliefs. A Warsaw court later ruled that Kaczynski's actions were illegal. Kaczyński was quoted as saying, "I am not willing to meet perverts."
  In 2016 Beata Szydło's government disbanded the Council for the Prevention of Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Intolerance, an advisory body set up in 2011 by then-Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The council monitored, advised and coordinated government action against racism, discrimination and hate crime.
  The local towns, cities, and Voivodeship sejmiks have declared their respective regions as LGBT ideology-free zone with the encouragement of the ruling PiS.
  Polish President Andrzej Duda, who was the Law and Justice party's candidate for presidency in 2015 and 2020, described the LGBT movement as "a foreign ideology". During his 2020 successful election campaign, he pledged he would ban teaching about LGBT issues in schools and he proposed changing the constitution to ban LGBT couples from adopting children.
caption: LGBT ideology free zones in Poland (red) as of January 2020.
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