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Gay news: Tory leader wants to help Poles on their 'journey' to recognise full rights for gay people
Nick Herbert will go to Europride in Warsaw
Cameron sends gay MP to showdown with Polish homophobes
David Cameron is to send gay MP Nick Herbert to Poland to encourage his party's allies in the European parliament to abandon their homophobic views.
Cameron told the Guardian that shadow environment secretary Herbert's mission is to persuade Poland's Law and Justice party to embark on a "journey" to moderate its views. Herbert will also attend a gay rights march in Warsaw in July.
Last year, the key role of leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists, part of the eight-nation group that includes the Tories, went to the Law and Justice party's Michal Kaminski, who was seen in a 2000 video clip describing gays as "fags".
Kaminski now sits on the front row of the European parliament and represents the group's position in all the main debates.
His past includes being associated with the far-right National Revival of Poland and a hard-line Catholic organisation, the Christian-National Union.
Senior Conservative MEP Edward McMillan-Scott was expelled from his party last year for rebelling against Cameron's agreement to Kaminski's appointment.
In a July 2009 interview with the BBC, McMillan-Scott said of Kaminski's three-year membership of National Revival of Poland: "It is homophobic, racist, anti-semitic - they use the Nazi salute, they are linked to the BNP through a thing called the European National Front - it is a deeply unpleasant organisation."
Kaminski was formerly a spin-doctor for the late President Kaczynski, who died earlier this month in a plane crash. Kaczynski banned gay rights marches in Warsaw when he was the city's mayor, and as President, campaigned against the Lisbon Treaty on the grounds that it would force Poland to accept gay marriages. As an MP, in 1999, he made the headlines in Poland when he visited London to pay homage to General Pinochet.
Cameron told the Guardian that his party was responding to these concerns by sending Herbert to Poland.
He said: "We would not join with parties that had unacceptable views. But we do recognise that, particularly in central and eastern Europe, there are parties that have still got some way to go on the journey of recognising full rights for gay people. We are helping them make the journey."
