WARSAW, Poland -- Dozens of authors, artists and scholars — including writer Margaret Atwood and film directors Pedro Almodóvar and Mike Leigh— have expressed outrage at the hostility being directed toward LGBT people in Poland by the country's president and other politicians.
In what they called a letter of “solidarity and protest,” they wrote to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, calling on the European Union to defend human rights values “being blatantly violated in Poland.” “Homophobic aggression in Poland is growing because it is condoned by the ruling party, which has chosen sexual minorities as a scapegoat with no regard for the safety and well-being of citizens,” the letter said.