Poland's ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has denounced LGBT rights, gender theory and UN sex education recommendations as a "threat" to the devout Catholic EU country. The head of the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party has also called on the country's 38 million people to respect the Catholic Church regardless of personal beliefs.

Kaczynski made the comments Wednesday in the central city of Wloclawek at a patriotic conference organised by Catholic Action, a lay group that seeks to boost Catholic influence on society. Widely regarded as Poland's de facto powerbroker, Kaczynski identified a series of phenomena that he believes threaten the country.

Those include "an attack on the family and children, their sexualisation", as well as sex education recommendations from the World Health Organization, and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) movement. He also faulted gender theory -- a look at sexual orientation and the roles assigned by society to individuals based on their gender -- which the Polish church believes undermines the traditional family.

"These ideologies, philosophies, all of this is imported, these are not internal Polish mechanisms," Kaczynski said at the conference. Read more via AFP