PLOCK, Poland (AP) – Three human rights activists went on trial in Poland on Wednesday for alleged profanity and offense to religious sentiment by adding the rainbow symbol of the LGBT rights movement to posters of a revered Roman Catholic icon and publicly display the altered image, including garbage bins and mobile toilets.
Activists said they had created posters that used rainbows to replace the halos on the Black Madonna and baby Jesus icon to protest what they saw as the hostility of Poland’s influential Catholic Church towards LGBT people.
One of the defendants, Elzbieta Podlesna, said in court on Wednesday that his 2019 action in Plock was spurred by an installation at the city’s St. Dominic Church that associated LGBT people with crime and negative behavior.
The three do not deny having placed the posters on the walls and in other parts of the church, but they do not admit to placing stickers with the image in bins and toilets. They deny wrongdoing.
Polish media identified the other defendants as Anna Prus and Joanna Gzyra-Iskandar.
Activists face up to two years in prison if convicted of offending religious sentiment and desecrating Poland’s most revered icon, Czestochowa’s Mother of God, popularly known as Czestochowa’s Black Madonna.
The original icon has been housed in the Jasna Gora monastery in the city of Czestochowa, since the 14th century.
A group of supporters with rainbow flags and banners with the words “O Arco-Íris Não Offende” gathered outside the court. A verdict was not expected on Wednesday.
Podlesna was arrested in a morning police raid on her apartment in 2019. She was detained for several hours and interrogated because of the icon posters that were placed around Plock. Later, a court said the detention was unnecessary and ordered that compensation equivalent to about $ 2,000 be awarded to her.
The case highlighted the conflict over social issues in predominantly Catholic Poland. The country’s right-wing government supports laws against insulting religious symbols and beliefs. Defenders of LGBT rights say that laws are used to stifle human rights and freedom of expression.