WARSAW, Poland (AP) – A Polish court on Tuesday acquitted three activists accused of violating and offending religious sentiments for producing and distributing images of a respected Roman Catholic icon altered around the LGBT rainbow to close.
The posters they distributed in the city of Plock in 2019 used rainbows as a halo in an image of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. Their purpose was to argue about what they consider to be the hostility of the influential Catholic Church towards LGBT people.
The court in the city of Plock saw no evidence of a crime and found that the activists were not motivated by a desire to offend someone’s religious feelings, but rather wanted to defend those facing discrimination, according to the Polish media.
The Conservative group that filed the lawsuit, the Life and Family Foundation, said it planned to appeal.
“The honor of the Mother of God 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 must protect (Catholics) from violence, including by LGBT activists.”
The case is seen in Poland as a test of freedom of speech under a deeply conservative government that has pushed back against secularisation and liberal views. Abortion was another hotspot in the country after the recent imposition of an almost total ban on it.
One accused, Elzbieta Podlesna, said at the opening of the trial in January that the 2019 action in Plock was spurred by an installation in the city of St. Petersburg. Dominic’s Church which associated LGBT people with crime and sin.
She and the other two activists – Anna Prus and Joanna Gzyra-Iskandar – were sentenced to two years in prison if convicted.
An LGBT rights group, love does not exclude, welcomed the ruling as a ‘breakthrough’.
“This is a triumph for the LGBT + resistance movement in the most homophobic country of the European Union,” he said.
The image involves a change of Poland’s most respected 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 – the holiest Catholic site in Poland since the 14th century.
Podlesna told the Onet news portal that the expropriation provision in the penal code ‘opens a 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 not understand it, especially since I am a believer,” Podlesna told Onet.
Podlesna was arrested by police at her apartment in early 2019, held for several hours and questioned about the posters. A court later said the detention was unnecessary and awarded her $ 2,000 in damages.
Because of all the attention the modified icon has received, it is now a very recognized image in Poland, sometimes seen during street protests.