In 2019, during a session of the Gromadka Commune Council, a resolution on the Local Government Family Rights Charter (SKPR) was adopted. We wrote about this in the article “Will there be a ban on staging nativity plays in Gromadka commune?”. Residents of Gromadka are fighting to repeal the resolution on the SKPR because they are concerned about the overly narrow interpretation of regulations concerning domestic violence set out in the resolution, as well as the possibility of the commune being deprived of subsidies from European and Norwegian funds. They are also concerned about the commune’s presence in the Atlas of Hate and the Charter’s homophobic overtones.
At the beginning of 2021, the councillors received a letter signed by 53 people, demanding that the Gromadka councillors repeal the resolution on the SKPR. The demand was signed, among others, by Mohawir Domański and Halina Gniewek from Gromadka. The councillors did not consider the letter. They decided that it was a petition and left it unexamined, citing formal deficiencies (a petition should include the addresses of the people submitting it, while the letter contained only email addresses – editor’s note).
“It was a demand from several dozen people who had signed it for this matter to be addressed,” explains Halina Gniewek. “If we had wanted to submit a petition to the council, we would have submitted a petition, but we submitted a letter. It was easiest for the councillors to call the letter a petition and close the matter,” Gniewek adds.
Following the councillors’ rejection, Gromadka residents turned to the Kultura Równości Association for support. The association submitted an open letter to the Lower Silesian Voivode, Jarosław Obremski, appealing for the resolution on the SKPR to be repealed.
The Kultura Równości letter reads, among other things:
This document is one of the anti-LGBT resolutions shamefully adopted by many local governments in Poland.
In the Lower Silesian Voivodeship, whose residents are known for their openness and hospitality, there is no place for such disgraceful actions, which lead to excluding some residents from their local communities. This is precisely the feeling experienced by people living in Gromadka who do not share the views expressed in the resolution, people raising children alone, non-heteronormative people, non-believers, and people who profess a religion other than Catholicism.
We would like to remind you that family models in Poland are diverse, and this is a fact. Polish law contains no single definition of a family, while in judicial decisions and legal scholarship, a family is understood as any lasting relationship between two or more people based on emotional, legal, or blood ties.
In our letter, we also appealed to the Voivode to address local governments in our voivodeship with the message contained in the resolution of the European Parliament adopted on 11 March. […] As an association working for the rights of LGBT+ people, we are counting on a firm response from the Voivode, consistent with EU resolutions, which provide a clear guide to what social relations based on respect and an understanding of the values of equality and diversity should look like.