On Monday, Polish President Andrzej Duda proposed an amendment to the Polish constitution that would bar same-sex couples from adopting children. The move comes as candidates for the upcoming presidential election are polling neck-and-neck. Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate running against the Civic Platform (PO) party and incumbent President Duda, announced this weekend that he is also against the adoption of children by gay couples. Duda’s statements seem to be an attempt to win over wavering voters from the PO party and appease members of his own political group, the Law and Justice Party (PiS).

The upcoming election will be a perturbing milestone for LGBTQ+ rights in Poland. However, this sentiment is not shared widely between political leaders in the country.  “I am convinced that, thanks to this, children’s safety and concern for the good of children will be ensured to a much greater extent,” the 48-year-old incumbent president said at a rally event in Warsaw, “The Polish constitution should explicitly state that the adoption of a child by a person in a same-sex relationship is excluded.” Duda signed his constitutional amendment on Monday, specifying that only heterosexual couples are fit to adopt children. Courts would be granted additional rights to assess couples to ensure they fit into that definition. 

Attacks like these on the rights of LGBTQ+ citizens by the Polish government are not new. Duda has likened LGBTQ+ “ideology” to communism on more than one occasion, vowing to ward off “indoctrination” from the country’s schools and public institutions. The majority-holding PiS has also dismissed gender and sexual minority rights as an invasive foreign influence targeting traditional Polish values. Government officials, legislators, and the president have all posted hateful comments online and used anti-LGBTQ+ views as rally points for their campaigns. 

A large portion of Europe, it seems, has also fallen victim to these anti-LGBTQ+ values. A 2019 study by the Pew Research Center found that no country in central or eastern Europe has legalized same-sex marriage, with some countries citing as low as 6% support for allowing the practice. Religious pressures, as well as political stubbornness, have held the region at a standstill for decades. Meanwhile, over half of the other countries on Earth—including all of western Europe—have adopted same-sex and LGBTQ marriage laws in support of LGBTQ+ rights. In Poland, however, approximately only 30% of voters support the practice. 

A two-thirds majority in the lower house of parliament, as well as a unanimous majority in the Upper Senate, is needed to integrate Duda’s proposal into the nation’s constitution. While the PiS does not currently hold enough seats to carry out such changes, the president hopes to win support for his discriminatory proposals from members of the PO, the agrarian Polish People’s Party, and other right-wing political factions. 

Andrzej Duda’s beliefs, while not uncommon, are a serious threat to the futures of both LGBTQ people and children in Poland—a country with nearly 80,000 orphans. The government should consider the larger implications of passing Duda’s amendment, and vote to keep the door for progress open rather than weave discrimination into the fabric Poland’s adoption policies.