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WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland's lawmakers on Friday approved a European convention against domestic violence following a stormy parliamentary debate, in which many said the convention threatens traditional family structures.
The lawmakers voted 254-175 with eight abstentions to empower President Bronislaw Komorowski to sign into law the 2011 Council of Europe's convention on combating violence against women and domestic violence. It obliges governments and organizations to penalize such violence, help victims and teach about tolerance.
In the debate, many right-wing and Catholic lawmakers said some of the regulations undermined Poland's traditional roles of mothers and fathers in the family. Some said its article about education would promote confused notions about gender. The article says that children should be taught about equal rights for men and women and about "non-stereotype roles" in the society and culture, which critics interpret as challenging the traditional roles of men and women in predominantly Roman Catholic Poland.
A spokesman for Poland's Roman Catholic bishops said in a statement that the vote means that the lawmakers don't see the "good of the marriage, of the family, of Poland's future demography as their priority."
The Rev. Jozef Kloch said the convention offers no legal solutions but links violence with "tradition, culture, religion and family rather than with the mistakes and weaknesses of actual people."
Zbigniew Gizynski, of the opposition conservative Law and Justice party, argued that school children will be taught that they can "freely choose their gender, that there can be two moms, two dads."
Deputy Parliament Speaker and women's rights activist, Wanda Nowicka dismissed such concerns and argued that the regulation is badly needed to protect Polish women.
Some 800,000 women in the nation of 38 million suffer from violence each year, she said.
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