Three Polish LGBT activists face trial over religious icon
Three Polish LGBT activists are facing trial in the city of Plock in Poland after protesting against the Catholic Church and their treatment of the LGBT people.
In 2019, the activists had added the LGBT rainbow symbol to the halos of the icon of the Black Madonna and Baby Jesus in stickers, which they then placed on the walls of a church.
Polish LGBT activists in court
The three defendants were identified as Elzbieta Podlesna, Anna Prus, and Joanna Gzyra-Iskandar. If convicted for alleged desecration and offending religious sentiment, the activists face up to two years in prison.
Podlesna said they did this because a traditional Easter display in the city’s St. Dominic’s Church had associated LGBT people with crime and negative behavior.
The display cited sins like traditional ones “greed,” “envy,” and “hate,” but also “LGBT” and “gender.”
While the three said they did post the stickers on the walls of the church, they didn’t put them on garbage bins and mobile toilets as alleged. They also said they didn’t do anything wrong.
“The immediate reason for our action was the homophobic and hurtful installation,” Podleśna told the court.
Meanwhile, Prus said the stickers had been printed for earlier protests against the “hypocrisy” of the church on the issue of pedophilia attacking LGBT people.
Polish LGBT activists versus Poland
The image of the icon they used was that of Poland’s Black Madonna of Czestochowa, which can be found at the Jasna Góra monastery in Częstochowa.
Podlesna was arrested in a police raid on her apartment in 2019. The Helsinki Human Rights Foundation said the police action “deliberately used as a form of repression.”
Poland’s ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party lauded the arrest of the activists. The party and the Roman Catholic Church in Poland have said LGBT rights are a threat to the country and its traditional values.
“No tall tales of freedom and ‘tolerance’ give ANYONE the right to offend the feelings of the faithful,” tweeted Joachim Brudziński, at the time Poland’s interior minister and now an MEP.
Likewise, President Andrzej Duda said during an election rally in 2020 that the “LGBT ideology” was “more dangerous than communism.”
Meanwhile, Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski said in a 2019 sermon that Poland was endangered by a “rainbow plague.”
LGBT rights in Poland
The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association had ranked Poland as the most anti-gay country in the EU.
What’s more, a number of Polish towns have declared themselves “free” of LGBT ideology. This has resulted in a backlash from other European countries and the international community.
Zuzanna Warso, a human rights lawyer, said, “The case shows the incompatibility of Polish law with European freedom of speech standards elaborated by the European Court of Human Rights.”
Karolina Gierdal, a lawyer at the Campaign Against Homophobia, a Warsaw-based rights group, said the root of the problem can be traced to the PiS.
“The year 2015, when the Law and Justice party came to power, is a significant pivotal moment marking the beginning in systematic decline in the quality of living conditions of the LGBT community in Poland,” Gierdal said.
Magdalena Fillips, an MP with centre-right Civic Coalition, told Euronews that PiS uses LGBT rights because this “allows them to back the opposition into a corner and to strike fears and aversion in the society.”