Teachers who promote gay equality in schools risk losing their jobs under draft regulations currently being drawn up by Poland's Ministry of Education, Polish Radio reports. Poland's Deputy Education Minister Miroslaw Orzechowski told Polish Radio the proposed regulations do not sanction the firing of homosexual teachers. Only teachers who present homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle to students could lose their jobs. Teachers who promote or have been convicted of paedophilia will also be fired should the proposed legislation be approved. The controversial news comes on the heels of news that the Polish Ministry of Education is also preparing legislation to sanction school principals who allow members of gay rights organisations to speak with pupils. Both moves are being masterminded by Roman Giertych, Poland's Catholic-nationalist Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education. Giertych recently sparked outrage in Heidelberg, Germany, during a meeting of EU education ministers when he openly criticized abortion rights and what he termed "homosexual propaganda." "The propaganda of homosexuality is reaching ever younger children," Giertych said in the Heidelberg speech. The government of conservative Law and Justice (PIS) Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski distanced itself from Giertych's Heidelberg comments, insisting they were his personal opinions and did not reflect government policy. But premier Kaczynski has since said he supports the controversial legislation to ban gay groups from schools, insisting that while homosexual lifestyles must be tolerated, they need not be positively affirmed. Giertych, 36, is the leader of Poland's extreme Catholic- nationalist League of Polish Families (LPR), a junior partner in the three-party populist-conservative coalition government of Prime Minister Kaczynski. Allegations which arose in the Polish media that some LPR party members may have had links to the far right and neo-Nazis are being probed by state prosecutors. Giertych's father, MEP Maciej Giertych, was reprimanded on Wednesday by the president of the European Parliament for publishing an anti-Semitic pamphlet. The 32-page booklet "Civilisations at war in Europe", which Giertych published in February, says that Jews are "biologically different" from "gentiles" and "prefer to voluntarily live separately from the communities which surround them". Ref: EUX.TV (m)