Fears of conservative Poles, who warned that joining the EU would steadily change the country

have been borne out.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/poland/110225/poland-gay-rights

A few years ago, Robert Wegrzyn's off-color joke about gays and lesbians would just have gotten a grin. Now it might cost the Polish member of parliament his job. The shift is a sign of changing mores in what is still arguably one of the European Union's most anti-gay countries.

The difficulties of Wegrzyn, 42, are a sign of the changes that are sweeping through Poland, in large measure as a result of the country joining the European Union in 2004. Overwhelmingly Roman Catholic and socially conservative, Poland had little place for issues like gay rights — even though, unlike in many U.S. states and European countries, homosexuality has been legal here since 1932.

But socially, being openly anti-gay is becoming as unacceptable as being anti-Semitic: A decade ago it was possible to hear otherwise cultured and intelligent Poles declaiming on how Jews controlled both capitalism and communism, but outside of marginal groups like soccer hooligans, such views are now almost never publicly expressed.

The price of being rabidly anti-homosexual is also rising.

Ryszard Legutko, a member of the European Parliament for the right-wing Law and Justice party was recently proposed as a possible leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists, a eurosceptic faction where Britain's conservatives rub shoulders with various central European nationalists. But Legutko's candidacy went up in flames after running into a storm of protest from Britain, where Prime Minister David Cameron has been very inclusive of gays, because of Legutko's comments that “tolerance” is a word that should be struck from the dictionary and denouncing the “horrendous” demands of homosexuals.


A man dressed as a priest participates in the gay pride parade in Warsaw on June 13, 2009.

homophobes, not to mention prejudiced against black people.