Out EU Pol Says Poland Blocked His Visit to 'LGBTQ-Free Zones'

Openly gay French junior Minister for European Affairs Clément Beaune claims that the Polish government blocked his bid to visit that country's so-called "LGBTQ Zones," the New York Daily News reports.

In an interview with the weekly French news magazine L'Obs, Beaune, who came out late last year, recounted that "Polish authorities recently told me they were not able to schedule this visit, and that's profoundly regrettable."

A spokesperson Beaune told Reuters that the minister "planned to visit the town of Krasnik in the east, one of the 100 municipalities which signed the declaration, but that Polish authorities had indicated "it would be badly received to go to Krasnik considering the health situation."

Polish officials claimed that Beaune's remarks were untrue, with Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek, the Polish deputy foreign minister, tweeting a rebuttal in which he declared, "This is of course not true. No one in the Polish government forbade or made it impossible for the French deputy minister to visit Krasnik."

"Since 2019, at least 100 municipalities across Poland have signed declarations saying they are free of 'LGBT ideology,' " Reuters recalled.

In recent years the Polish government has become increasingly homophobic, prompting condemnation from other member states of the European Union and factoring into a proposed resolution that would declare all the EU to be a "freedom zone" for - rather than from - LGBTQ people.

The Daily News recalled that in 2019 a conservative Polish magazine called Gazeta Polska "distributed a sticker showing a black cross superimposed on a rainbow flag, and the phrase 'strefa wolna od LGBT (LGBT-free zone).'

"The sticker giveaway coincided with violent attacks by far-right groups on the first-ever LGBTQ Pride parade in the eastern city of Bialystok, in July of that year," the Daily News article added.

Anti-gay sentiment in Poland is also driven by the Catholic Church, to the extent that several rights activists were recently charged with "offending religious sentiment" for having created posters that reproduced an iconic image of the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus and added rainbow-hued haloes to the figures.

Reuters reported that Beaune went forward with his trip to Poland despite allegedly being turned away from his planned visit to "LGBTQ-Free Zones" and that he "met LGBT campaigners on the trip."