WARSAW, Poland (AP) – A Polish court on Tuesday acquitted three activists charged with desecration and insulting religious sentiments for producing and distributing images of a revered Roman Catholic icon adapted with the LGBT rainbow.
The posters, which they distributed in the city of Plock in 2019, used rainbows as halos in an image of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. Their goal was to protest what they perceived to be the hostility of Poland’s influential Catholic Church towards LGBT people.
The court in the city of Plock saw no evidence of a crime and ruled that the activists were not motivated by the desire to insult anyone’s religious feelings, but rather to defend those who were discriminated against, according to Polish media.
The conservative group that brought the case, the Life and Family Foundation, said they planned to appeal.
“Defending the honor of the Mother of God is the responsibility of each of us, and the guilt of the accused is beyond question,” said group founder Kaja Godek on Facebook. “The courts of the Republic of Poland must protect (Catholics) from violence, including by LGBT activists.”
The case was seen in Poland as a test of freedom of speech under a very conservative government opposed to secularization and liberal attitudes. Abortion has been another flashpoint in the country following the recent introduction of a near-complete ban on it.
A defendant, Elzbieta Podlesna, said when the trial started in January that the Plock action in 2019 was spurred by an installation at St. Dominic’s Church in the city that linked LGBT people to crime and sins.
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 Does Not Exclude, hailed 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 was a modification of Poland’s most revered icon, the Mother of God of Czestochowa, popularly known as the Black Madonna of Czestochowa. The original has been housed in the Jasna Gora Monastery in Czestochowa – Poland’s holiest Catholic site – since the 14th century.
Podlesna told the Onet news portal that the desecration provision in the criminal code “leaves a door open for us to use it 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, especially because I’m a believer, ”Podlesna told Onet.
Podlesna was arrested in 2019 in a police raid on her apartment in the early morning, detained for several hours and questioned about the posters. A court later said the custody was unnecessary and ordered her in damages of approximately $ 2,000.
Because of all the attention that the changed icon has received, it is now a very recognizable image in Poland, which you sometimes see at street protests.