Jakub and Dawid triumphantly announced it, this Thursday, November 3, on their Facebook account, in the caption of an image dating back to 2017, where we can see them in light beige suits, just after having exchanged their alliances on the Portuguese island. from Madeira: “Our Constitution does not prohibit same-sex marriage. » The couple had been fighting for five years to have their union recognized in a country where it is not possible to marry people of the same sex, and where the ultra-conservative government dominated by the PiS party firmly rejects “LGBT ideology”.
The exception for marriages abroad
Their administrative procedures having been rejected in 2018 by the Civil Registry of Warsaw, the two companions initiated a legal action, while staging a hundred false marriage proposals filmed with a hidden camera in the streets of the capital. They finally won their case before the Supreme Administrative Court, after losing at first instance.
Yet the Constitution could not be clearer: Article 18 states that “the Republic of Poland safeguards and protects marriage as a union of woman and man, family, motherhood and parenthood”. But the judges did not see any incompatibility with the situation of the couple. “This provision does not prejudge the impossibility of legally regulating homosexual relations”and therefore it “cannot constitute an independent obstacle to the transcription of a foreign marriage certificate”considered the Court in a judgment delivered in July.
Jakub Kwieciński and Dawid Mycek welcome decision “historical” who could encourage other gay people in Poland to get married. In fact, nothing now prevents them from going even to neighboring Germany, where same-sex marriage has been legal since 1is October 2017. The couple cite the names of politicians known to have repeated that civil unions could only be considered legally between heterosexuals, starting with the Minister of Justice, Zbigniew Ziobro. “Know that they lie”wanted to let the two men know.
Sensitive cases
Polish justice is currently seized in various cases related to the rights of sexual minorities, in full arm wrestling between the European Commission and the government on the fundamental values to be respected within the EU. Faced with the authorities’ refusal to prosecute the project « Stop LGBT » targeting the “homosexual propaganda in the streets of Polish cities”, the District Court of Warsaw-Śródmieście (city center) has just ordered the public prosecutor’s office to open preliminary proceedings. As of 2019, the country has had around 100 such areas, mostly in the east and south-east of the country, where communities have signed a “Family Bill of Rights” versus “LGBT ideology”.
However, not all decisions point in the same direction. At the end of October, the Krakow Court of Appeal rejected, on formal grounds, the proceedings against Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski who had spoken of “rainbow plague” during a mass celebrating the 75e anniversary of the Warsaw uprising.