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The Tory-created MEP EU grouping has a new, homophobic, co-leader

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Rex Features

The co-chair of the grouping that includes the Conservative MEPs has a serious LGBT problem.

On Wednesday, members of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) elected two co-chairs to lead the political grouping.

The UK Conservatives 19 MEPs have been members of the ECR grouping since 2009.

One of the co-chairs was the Tory MEP Syed Kamall, and the other was Polish MEP Ryszard Legutko.

Legutko is a member of the Polish Law and Justice Party, who ran for the chairmanship unsuccessful in 2011.

Interviewed in 2010 for Gazeta Wroclawska, Legutko wrote in opposition to Euro-Pride.

It is the tyranny of the minority who managed to take over the main institutions, the main ideologies in the Western world.

They now entered in the European institutions and dictate terms.

We can not agree with others, but you must tolerate them.

The paradox lies in the fact that among the major clubs, which is used in order to silence all those who in this orthodoxy is not fit, tolerance is truncheons.

Legutko drew distinctions between 'homosexuals' who are men inclined to prefer men, and the 'gay movement' which he views as intolerant.

For instance he believed that Pride festival goers who dress up as nuns or priests were offensive.

In the same interview Legutko compared the orthodoxy of pro-gay rights MEPs to the 'enslaved mind' of Communist apparatchiks spouting dogma.

The remarks caused headaches for the Conservatives in 2011 when Legutko ran to lead their group.

Appearing on France 24 in 2014, Legutko called same sex marriage an 'unnecessary and destructive experiment'.

In 2017 he's been made a co-chair, and according to the ECR group, he was unopposed in this endeavour.

Prior to his new role he served as the group's Vice Chair.

What is the ECR?

ECR has 24 members parties, including the Tories and the Ulster Unionist Party from the United Kingdom.

It was established in 2009 by David Cameron as a 55 strong 'anti-federalist bloc' in the European Parliament.

The grouping previously had one chair, Kamall, but due to Brexit a position of co-chair was created to assist with Britain's transition out of the EU.

It is expected the British will not elect new MEPs to the European Parliament when the current term expires in 2019, leaving Legutko in sole leadership of the ECR group.

Previously the Conservatives caucused with the centre-right European People's Party Group, which today contains Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, and François Fillon's Les Republicans.

HT Political Scrapbook

More: The best and worst places in Europe to be gay, mapped

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