Polish president
Lech Kaczynski, a staunch Roman Catholic, said his views
like traditional national values and gay people are
misunderstood. Kaczynski, of the socially conservative
Law and Justice Party, took office in December on
pledges that included making sure that Poland's
traditional Roman Catholic values were not overwhelmed by
the generally liberal European viewpoint. Poland, a
former Soviet bloc country, joined the European Union
in 2004.
"I am aware that often the things I say are not
in line with the European correctness," Kaczynski said
in an interview Monday with the Associated Press in
New York. "Even more, I am ascribed views that are not
really mine."
But he stressed the need to "verbalize our
problems in Europe.... This is much more important
than the hasty integration, a hasty killing of a
national country that is an incomparably better center for
consolidating people than an anonymous, bureaucratic, and
cold European Union."
Kaczynski, a lawyer, has drawn criticism from
E.U. members for saying that privately he
supports the death penalty in cases of heinous
murders, although he acknowledged that no changes in Polish
law can be made against E.U. standards that ban
capital punishment.
He has also been criticized for speaking against
same-sex marriage. He says property and inheritance
issues for gay couples can be settled by lawyers.
Talking to the AP, he defended his views. "I do
not support the turning-back of the wheel of history,"
Kaczynski said, noting he is for equal rights for
women and is "not an enemy" of gay people. "I only
think that we cannot say that there are two equal
cultures," he said. "If we said so, that would mean we are
saying that our fate is extinction.
"I have a certain fear here, but that does not
mean that I intend to persecute anyone, that I intend
to prevent him from living, from making a career, from
working, from being a soldier."
Kaczynski, whose identical twin brother,
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is the prime minister, is in New
York on a four-day visit to attend the annual general
assembly session of the United Nations. Both brothers are
former activists in the Solidarity trade union
movement that helped topple communist rule in
1989-1990. (Monika Scislowska, AP)
