POLAND’S cabinet reshuffle has been condemned for elevating an open homophobe to head the Education Ministry.

New Education and Science Minister Przemyslaw Czarnek declared over the summer that LGBT people “are not equal to normal people.

“Let’s protect ourselves against LGBT ideology and stop listening to idiocy about human rights or equality,” he said then.

Polish People’s Party MP Piotr Zgorzelski said: “Such a man is the minister of education? It’s a scandal and a disgrace.

Mr Czarnek was only famous for “his words about dehumanising other people, about stigmatising sexual minorities,” he said.

The reshuffle keeps Zbigniew Ziobro as justice minister. Mr Ziobro has repeatedly clashed with the European Union over judicial reforms that Brussels says extend political control over the courts.

Mr Ziobro has accused the EU of wanting to impose same-sex marriage on Poland and allow gay couples to adopt, both of which he opposes.

Polish President Andrzej Duda has called the struggle for LGBT rights an “ideology worse than communism.”

The row between Warsaw and Brussels intensified this week as the EU’s first assessment of the rule of law across its 27 member states expressed “serious concern” about judicial independence in Poland, as well as in Hungary. Hungary described the report as “fallacious and absurd,” but the Polish government ignored it.

Polish opposition Civic Platform MP Cezary Tomczyk said the reshuffle kept all the worst ministers from the previous cabinet. But he welcomed the entry of ruling Law and Justice party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski to the cabinet as deputy prime minister, since he said it would make the country’s real political authority figure more accountable.