WARSAW, Poland, June 22, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – This past weekend a number of Polish youth organized and held a so-called “Normal” parade through the streets of Warsaw, starting at the parliament buildings. The parade was held in order to publicly celebrate sexual normality, the marriage of a man and a woman, and Polish tradition.
The widely under-reported event came only weeks after and in response to the controversial Warsaw pro-gay “Equality” parade, which received a great deal of publicity on account of its being banned by Warsaw mayor, Lech Kaczynski, who is also a leading presidential candidate. Despite the mayor’s refusal to grant the pro-gay demonstration a permit, the parade went ahead as planned. Even though it was illegal a number of liberally-minded European politicians took part in the event, including the vice-speaker of the lower house.
“That was a scandal of its own,” said Lech Kowalewski of Human Life International in Poland. He explained that because these politicians essentially have immunity from the police, the police ended up protecting the participants in the illegal parade, effectively turning the law on its head.
The numbers for both events are suspect, with several liberal news sources reporting and gloating over a supposed mere 800, or ‘hundreds’, of attendees for the pro-marriage march, and citing numbers in excess of 2,500 for the “Equality” March.
However, the organizers of the pro-marriage parade estimated 2,000 participants. WorldNetDaily concurred, reporting that ‘thousands’ were present. A photograph accompanying WorldNetDaily’s story appears to substantiate the number.
“We are here because we want to protect certain moral values and traditions and the notion that a family consists of a man and a woman,” said 18-year-old Kacper Maczak, one of the youth in attendance at the event.
At one point during the event, the marchers came upon a newly married man and woman, and applauded them saying “You are the real future of Poland.”
Roman Giertych , a member of parliament and the head of the League of Polish Families spoke to those assembled. “If somebody wants to offend public morality,” said Giertych, “if somebody wants to demonstrate his deviations and to insult our society, our values, our tradition, then there can be no consent to that!”
JJ