Warsaw, Poland (AP) – A Polish court on Tuesday acquitted three activists accused of desecrating and offending religious sentiments for producing and distributing images of a revered Roman Catholic icon modified to include the LGBT rainbow.
The posters, which were distributed in the town of Plock in 2019, used the rainbow as halos in an image of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. Their goal was to protest what they considered the hostility of the influential Catholic Church in Poland towards LGBT people.
The Plock City Court saw no evidence of a crime and determined that the activists were not motivated by a desire to offend anyone’s religious sentiments, but wanted to defend those facing discrimination, according to the media. Poles.
The Conservative group that filed the case, the Life and Family Foundation, said it planned to appeal.
“Defending the honor of the Virgin is the responsibility of each of us, and the guilt of the accused is indisputable,” the group’s founder, Kaja Godek, said on Facebook. “The courts of the Republic of Poland should protect (Catholics) from violence, including LGBT activists.”
The case was seen in Poland as a test of freedom of expression under a deeply conservative government that has been backing down against secularization and liberal views. Abortion has been another turning point in the country after the recent introduction of an almost total ban.
One defendant, Elzbieta Podlesna, said when the trial opened in January that the 2019 action in Plock was driven by a facility in the city’s St. Dominic’s Church that associated LGBT people with crime and sin. .
She and the other two activists – Anna Prus and Joanna Gzyra-Iskandar – faced up to two years in prison if found guilty.
An LGBT rights group, Love Don’t Exclude, welcomed the ruling as a “breakthrough.”
“This is a triumph for the LGBT + resistance movement in the most homophobic country in the European Union,” he said.
The image involved an alteration of Poland’s most revered icon, Our Lady of Czestochowa, popularly known as the Black Virgin of Czestochowa. The original is located in the monastery of Jasna Gora in Czestochowa, the most sacred Catholic site in Poland, since the 14th century.
Podlesna told the news portal Onet that the provision to desecrate the penal code “leaves a door open for use against people who think a little differently.
“I still wonder how the rainbow, a symbol of diversity and tolerance, offends these feelings. I can’t understand it, especially because I’m a believer, “Podlesna told Onet.
Podlesna was arrested in a police raid in the early hours of the morning in 2019, detained for several hours and questioned about the posters. A court later said the arrest was unnecessary and ordered him to pay about $ 2,000 in damages.
Due to all the attention the modified icon has received, it is now a well-known image in Poland, which is sometimes seen in street protests.