WARSAW, Poland (AP) – A Polish court acquitted three activists on Tuesday who had been accused of desecrating and offending religious sentiments for producing and distributing images of a revered Roman Catholic icon altered to include the LGBT rainbow.
The posters, which were distributed in the city of Plock in 2019, used rainbows as halos in an image of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. Their aim was to protest what they considered to be the hostility of Poland’s influential Catholic Church towards LGBT people.
The Plock city court saw no evidence of a crime and concluded that the activists were not motivated by a desire to offend anyone’s religious feelings, but to defend those who face discrimination, according to Polish media.
The conservative group that opened the case, the Vida e Família Foundation, said it planned to appeal.
“Defending the honor of the Mother of God is the responsibility of each of us, and the fault of the accused is indisputable,” said the group’s founder, Kaja Godek, on Facebook. “Courts in the Republic of Poland must 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 struggled against secularization and liberal views. Abortion has been another critical point in the country after the recent introduction of an almost total ban.
A defendant, Elzbieta Podlesna, said when the trial began in January that the 2019 action in Plock was spurred by an installation at the city’s Santo Domingo church that associated LGBT people with crime and sins.
She and the other two activists – Anna Prus and Joanna Gzyra-Iskandar – face up to two years in prison if found guilty.
An LGBT rights group, Love Does Not Exclude, hailed the decision 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 a modification of Poland’s most revered icon, the Czestochowa Mother of God, popularly known as the Black Madonna of Czestochowa. The original has been housed in the Jasna Gora monastery in Czestochowa – Poland’s most sacred Catholic site – since the 14th century.
Podlesna told the news portal Onet that the desecration clause in the penal code “leaves an open door 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 it, especially since I am a believer, ”Podlesna told Onet.
Podlesna was arrested in a morning police raid on her apartment in 2019, held for several hours and interrogated about the posters. Later, a court said the detention was unnecessary and ordered her to pay about $ 2,000 in damages.
Because of all the attention the changed icon has received, it is now a well-known image in Poland, sometimes seen in street protests.