Polish education minister blames record high child suicide rate on LGBTQ+ ‘ideology’

Poland’s education minister Przemysław Czarnek has blamed LGBTQ+ “ideology” and “brainwashing” for the country’s worrying rise in child suicide.

Attempted suicides for children in Poland are at an all-time high, according to recently release statistics.

Over the past two years, Poland has recorded a surge of attempted suicides in children. In 2021, 1496 attempted suicides were recorded, rising to 2,031 in 2022. The 2022 figure, according to reports, is more than twice the average registered in years before 2021.

In a rational look to why the statistics are worsening, experts said that Poland’s outdated mental health support system could be a major factor. Effects of the Covid-19 pandemic were also taken into consideration for the considerable rise.

The education minister, however, claimed the blame lies with LGBTQ+ people.

“It is necessary to protect the values ​​of family and marriage, and not to attack [them] with Marxist and LGBT ideologies that wreak havoc in the minds of children,” Czarnek said.

“These attempted and, unfortunately, successful suicides are the result of the minds of young people being clouded by LGBT, neo-liberal and neo-Marxist ideologues, brainwashing them and leaving them to fend for themselves.”

He has been criticised for placing blame elsewhere without actually addressing problems in Poland adding to the issue.

Czarnek linked LGBTQ+ people with Nazis

According to reports, Czarnek said in 2022 that “moral corruption and wickedness of so-called sex educators” were to blame for attempted suicides amongst Poland’s children.

Similar to legislation in the US, Czarnek is trying to pass laws that would ban outside organisations from entering schools and “morally corrupting” children.

Although the minister is set on trying to silence LGBTQ+ people, the moves were twice vetoed by president Andrzej Duda.

The defamatory comments don’t stop there, with Czarnek adding that “LGBT ideology comes from the same roots as Nazism.”

In 2022, a “disastrous” bill set to “punish” LGBTQ+ youth in Poland was nicknamed “Lex Czarnek” after the education minister, as experts in the region warned it would “punish” queer youth by blocking education on LGBTQ+ issues.