Minister of National Education Ryszard Legutko – who is he?

• http://www.bib.edu.pl/zest188.html
  • Legutko Ryszard I don’t like tolerance : drafts and essays (pl) / Ryszard Legutko.- Kraków : “Arka” , 1993 .-156, [2] s. : err. ; 21 cm
  • Tolerance doesn’t solve anything / Ryszard Legutko ; rozm. przepr. Janusz A. Majcherek //Prz. Polit .-Nr 36 .-(1998) s. 46-49,51-53

Academics in LGBT studies called “parasites”

• http://bad.eserver.org /issues/ 2004/69/ kitlinski_lockard.html + http://www.gender.lodz.pl /czytelnia/lodz_gender /queer_feminist_ways_of _looking_at_films.htm

  • Recently in an essay in the influential daily Rzeczpospolita, political philosopher Ryszard Legutko called scholars of queer studies ‘parasites’ – a recourse to Stalinist terminology, when political enemies routinely were accused of social parasitism. This was the same philosophy professor who authored a collection of essays nonchalantly entitled I Don’t Like Toleration. The Rzeczpospolita essay referred to gays as “people of a disturbed sphere of sexual desire” and mocked LGBT studies: “There is a mania of looking for homosexual subtexts in many creators of culture. No small legion of university parasites tries to make careers on such research.” ...

    The consequences of anti-gay public attacks by senior academics arrived immediately. The day of publication, the chair of the Department for Polish Culture at Warsaw University denied lecture halls for the continuation of a series of extracurricular lectures in queer studies, entitled “Homosexuality in Culture” and organized at the initiative of department students. The first and, as it turns out, last lecture was held by Pawel Leszkowicz on the critical art of New York City gay artist and activist, David Wojnarowicz. Lectures were scheduled to include the subjects of literature, cinema, philosophy, ethics and cultural anthropology in LGBT studies and run throughout the semester. It is equally indicative that when Leszkowicz sent his writing on Wojnarowicz’s retrospective in SoHo’s New Museum, he received an e-mail from an editor of Gazeta Wyborcza: “Even if they are called the worst obscurantists in the world, our photo editors do not allow such art in our magazine.”

    Yet counter-posed to the attitude of gay-rejectionist venues, a first collection of LGBT essays in Polish, A Queer Mixture, was published and another is forthcoming. Annual international queer studies conferences and an increasing number of interdepartmental queer studies seminars, with funding from university rectors, constitute part of this new visibility. A new wave of queer art is emerging from university art departments and galleries.

    The academy provides fora for oppositionalist public intellectuals in Poland, and women scholar-activists provide some of the leading voices of dissent. Last year Maria Szyszkowska, a professor of law and philosophy and senator in parliament, introduced a legislative proposal for registered same-sex partnership bill, one based on Germany’s Act of Life Partnership. While there is very little chance for passage of such an act, the European Parliament may force the government’s hand. Its 2002 report on Fundamental Rights in the EU endorsed same-sex marriage and adoption rights for homosexuals, and the EU’s Court of Human Rights has ruled repeatedly in support of equal rights for gays. The commitment of a parliamentarian and academic such as Szyszkowska towards achieving equal rights represents what can be achieved through the use of academia to reform public policy. This confluence of public culture and grassroots activism inside universities has had and will continue to have profound social effects.