News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


Ah come on now Johnny. And Happy Fourth of July to you and Polonius by the way, and to all other American forum members. Nobody on here is anti-Christian though criticism of the Catholic church in Poland or elsewhere is inevitable in a discussion about homosexuality. I'm a Catholic and can find plenty of faults with the church, but I still believe in God, I'm not against Christianity. And the majority of homosexuals and lesbians are not fanatical, they're just ordinary people who want to live an ordinary life, doing the same things as you and I. Look we now have same sex marriage in Ireland but Johnny I can tell you, hand on heart, that walking through the centre of the capital city on a daily basis, I have never seen any expressions of public affection between a gay couple. I did see a couple of young lesbians holding hands once but they were tourists! Homos are not taking over the world.

UK, Ireland / Pack from Ireland to Poland via An Post [16]

Very good point. Our postman used to do that all the time, even when we were home. And then when I went to the PO where they knew me quite well I still had to show my ID.

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


Discussing the smell of a person's anus is not an 'opinion'. If you were opposed to per-marital sex would you bring up the smell of a woman's vagina as a topic for discussion in order to debate the rights and wrongs of sex between unmarried couples?


No Polonius. I don't hurl insults. I am not a rude person but I despise dishonesty and I will challenge it. You claim that you are not homophobic but your very personal insults to the gay community demonstrate clearly that you are.


Speaking with respect to and about other human beings is not sugar coating. It's basic manners and common courtesy, something which is sadly disappearing from society and not excusable in a man of your age.


As a heterosexual female in a monogamous relationship I am not interested in the sexual practices of male homosexuals.

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


No. Polonius you are daubed with that brush on this forum not because you oppose same sex unions, but because of the extremely insulting, personal comments you make, designed to shame and ridicule homosexual men. You often use the term LGBT but most of your comments involve homosexual males. You have even discussed the smell of a man's anus, the amount of hair and warts to be found therein and speculated on whether they take turns being penetrated.

UK, Ireland / Pack from Ireland to Poland via An Post [16]

It is indeed and a great bunch of lads they are!

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


Stop your nonsense, I mean who cares how much homosexuals earn?? Comin' over 'ere takin' our jobs and our men...........hee,hee!

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


And who cares? Apart from yourself. A desperate effort to keep this thread alive so that you can carry on talking about your favourite subject. 'Now if I can just get them to buy into the idea of 'researching' the gay community in Poland, sure I can go on and on about homos for another six months at least on this thread alone'. Oh woe is me.......

Food / Can you do online food shopping in Poland? Supermarkets. [42]

Alma are definitely very pricey. I would shop there for 'treats' rather than regular weekly shopping but last time I was there which was summer of 2013 I noticed that some of their prices were no worse than Real.

Food / Can you do online food shopping in Poland? Supermarkets. [42]


Willow you need to visit the Tesco.pl site. That has prices in złoty. And yes food can be surprisingly expensive in the big cities anyway. My weekly shopping bill would cost only about 25% less at Tesco in Warsaw than at it does at Tesco in Ireland.

Food / Can you do online food shopping in Poland? Supermarkets. [42]

Hi Willow. Tesco Poland have an online shopping facility where you can see prices. When I lived in Warsaw to get the best value for money I did my shopping in three different supermarkets and the local 'farmers' market. My locals were Lidl, Real and Alma. Lidl is very cheap but you have to be selective about what you buy there, Real about average and Alma quite pricey but they have lovely speciality foods and fresh breads, cakes etc. Local market tends to best for cheap, reasonable quality fresh fruit, veg, bread, fish, eggs their meat is ok too but the health and safety practises can leave something to be desired!

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


What I hope is that you are more circumspect in your speech in the real world than you are in the virtual one. Otherwise, knowing the litigious culture of America you will find yourself landed with a slander suit. Making such an accusation in public, before witnesses, to a respected teacher in a Catholic school could be potentially extremely damaging for that individual. Thankfully in Ireland you would be set upon by a howling lynch mob of angry mothers whose children I have been privileged to teach and guide for many years. Irish schools and teachers are internationally renowned (and you check that) for the quality of pastoral care which they give to children. Having spent my teaching career thus far in inner city schools amongst severely disadvantaged children I can assure you that the school and its staff are often the only source and example of stability, order and decent values in the lives of children whose parents are drunks, junkies and jailbirds, to use terms you would understand.


An unfortunate analogy.


The only vile and repulsive thing here Polonius is your own filthy and disgusting sexual obsessions. Kindly stop forcing them down our throats.

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


Stop that 'innit' business. It's silly and rude.


I'm not being awkward here Polonius and I'm speaking purely as a kindergarten and elementary school teacher but parental opinion is not needed for planned textbooks. There's no reason to consult parents. It's essential that parents should be involved in their childrens' education but they have no really useful role to serve in vetting textbooks. The purpose of textbooks is to support the teacher in delivering the curriculum, covering the syllabus for the year and assisting the children in achieving learning goals. Teachers choose which books to use based on that. How for example can a parent be an expert in which type of maths book is best suited to the 10-12 year old?? As a matter of fact in Ireland anyway the Dept of Education has been trying to actively discourage reliance on textbooks and encourages teachers to design a range of original learning materials and lesson plans; this is to assist with teaching children of different levels of ability in a single class. Many children may be either well below or somewhat ahead in their level and purpose made worksheets, etc supported by a general reference library are often much better as teaching and learning tools.

Besides Polonius, you simply can't put that kind of control in place in schools because schools have many other books apart from textbooks. All schools have a library, as well as individual class libraries or book corners and the material there, while carefully selected reflects a wide range of published material. If childrens' books begin to feature non-conventional family images, it will be virtually impossible to censor this entirely from a child's life. And what about public libraries?

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


Polonius I don't know what country you're referring to but in Ireland the government and EU has no control over or input into textbooks. They are planned, written and published by individual publishers who don't consult families but rather panels of educators/teachers. The books are written and designed to assist teachers in delivering the national curriculum. So it's the curriculum that's the issue. Countries have freedom to design their own curricula.

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


You are absolutely and most certainly not in line with the teachings of the Church. I've quoted the Catholic Primate of Ireland on this forum before and I'll do it again as he's a senior churchman appointed by the Vatican and therefore speaks globally to all Catholics. Speaking about homosexuality he stated last month, "The church's teaching, if it isn't expressed in terms of love - then it's got it wrong," There is no love or charity towards your fellow man in your creed Polonius.


I was taught to be an independent thinker. I don't see myself as part of any group and feel no need to be. If I agree with you I'll say so, equally if I disagree with you I'll say so and the same applies to those you refer to as the 'church bashers'. I disagreed with Harry about all that stuff regarding attendance at Mass. I've disagreed quite amicably with Johnny Reb on what it says in the Bible but I see his point of view and if the man is as he claims, over 80 then I think we have to allow him a bit of leeway. I wouldn't expect someone to change their views at that stage in their life. I try to be fair-minded.

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


Absolutely. And that needs to be said more often. Polonius constantly makes posts and starts threads with only the flimsiest connection to Poland in order to get up on his soap box and start preaching his personal creed.

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


Excellent point.

From my personal observations I would say that some gay people do seem to be promiscuous. I'm not sure if they're more so than heteros though. Polonius lives in a bit of a fantasy world where heteros remain virgins till they marry their childhood sweetheart. In reality the things that young heterosexual Poles get up to would make his virtuous blood run cold.

But if gays are more promiscuous, surely that's part of their culture because until the recent past they couldn't openly have a relationship. So they didn't have the option of having a few boyfriends/girlfriends before ultimately settling down with a partner like their hetero peers. Availability of civil partnerships and marriage support people in going for the choice of a stable, long term relationship.

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


Well now, let me tell you of one case in Ireland which is still spoken of to this day and which had a massive impact in this country which has thankfully had very positive results.

It happened in the early 1980s. A young gay man was beaten to death in a public park in Dublin known to be frequented by gay men. A group of local 'lads' had been dishing out beatings to homosexuals but this time they went too far. The whole country was outraged by what happened. Up till then most Irish people had known and accepted the fact that some people were gay, even my grandparents had nothing against gays. But when this murder took place we realized that that wasn't enough and that we wouldn't tolerate hate crimes.

In the days before the gay marriage referendum people went to the bench in Fairview Park where that poor young guy used to sit and left flowers in his memory. We still remember him.

Polonius you disgust me with your talk of statistics, how dare you reduce a human life to a statisitic, even one such death is a death too many.

And if society hadn't forced gay people to go out cruising in public instead of just going to a normal meeting place like a bar or club, then that murder might never have taken place.

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


Thanks Harry. I didn't express myself very well. I was thinking more of murder by neglect. As Jon says the infant mortality rate was high and I'm sure little was done to care for sick babies.

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


I don't understand the comment Gosc. It was a home for unmarried mothers so obviously the girls were pregnant when they went in there and their babies must have been murdered by the nuns, utterly, utterly shocking but these babies weren't the result of orgies in churches.

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


More old cobblers from you as usual

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


Now that would be a better focus for your energies than all this LGBT stuff. Seeing what you can do to help those in need, and if you're already doing that, which you may well be, what more could you be doing? You've mentioned those with nothing before and you sounded quite sincere about it, so I think you're a decent person at heart with a bit of charity and compassion in you.

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


Levi, why 'gay' orgies - heterosexuals have been doing the same thing for centuries.

Travel / Polish Architecture [147]


Carry me out and bury me decently, where you would you get the patience to deal with them.
Thanks for the link to the paper buildings Jon, stunning. What a pity there isn't more of that kind of thing on this forum. Stuff that's to do with Poland and actually interesting and nice.

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]


Is that the Catholic version?? As Catholics we are not supposed to read other versions because the translations are not reliable. And we're not supposed to interpret the Bible ourselves in case we get it wrong. You're supposed to consult a 'scholarly churchman' ie a well educated priest of one of the more intellectual orders. Anyway as far as I'm concerned if Jesus didn't say it I'm not interested.

News / President-Elect of Poland, Duda, rescues Eucharist [45]

Oh for God's sake, and I speak as a Catholic. Why is he awesome? Anyone brought up as a Catholic would do the same thing.

USA, Canada / American people attitude towards Poles in the USA [98]


Love it Johnny. Let's hear more of it please! Reminds me of Elvis and Poke Salad Annie. How she'd go on down and pick herself a mess of it every day...........and yes you should definitely go to Poland and introduce them to English southern style. God, some people on this forum really have a total sense of humour bypass and a complete lack of appreciation of other cultures.

USA, Canada / American people attitude towards Poles in the USA [98]


As an Irish person, I can understand it. Perhaps some arrogant individuals pretend they can't. And it sounds beautiful and musical to my Irish ears.

Life / Boy Scouts in Poland = Patriotism, honesty, and self-sacrifice [13]

Yes that was the original idea. Sadly the profile of the boy scout is changing somewhat. For one thing it's quite an expensive hobby in Poland. Many working class kids can't afford to join because the uniform, money for trips, camping gear etc are beyond their parents' budget. In Ireland I actually saw girl scouts in uniform throwing litter in a park. As a teacher, I couldn't ignore it, walked up to them and said 'So that's what they teach you now in scouts girls, is it?' They picked up the litter.

News / Does democratic Poland guarantee it's LGBT citizens respect for human and civil rights? [1169]

I think one has to realise that Poland never really experienced the cultural revolution of the 1960s because it was essentially a Soviet state. Whilst 'free' Europe underwent a gradual change in attitudes over the last five decades, Poland has been pitchforked into debates like gay marriage equality, that it simply isn't ready for. People keep mentioning Ireland, but Ireland's history is very different to Poland. We have been a free nation for almost a hundred years and we had a basically democratic infrastructure left in place by the British. We are culturally much more similar to Britian than to Poland and we generally follow the same trends as the UK but about ten years later.

Life / Why are Polish so conservative and religious? [240]


Le'ts not add ageism to the other 'isms' that are all too plentiful in this forum.


By evil old man in a dress, do you mean the Pope or senior churchmen in general?

Catholicism does not require people to kow-tow to anybody nor does it require you or encourage you to hate anyone. The essential message of christianity and of Catholicism is 'love God and love your fellow man.' If you are really to be a 'good Catholic' you must love your gay neighbour as you love your straight neighbour. It is God and not the Church who asks this of you. As Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, the Catholic Primate of Ireland recently said 'if you're homo-phobic, you're God-phobic'.