Polish women acquitted over rainbow LGBT+ Virgin Mary posters

Campaigners say posters were response to homophobic installation which put LGBT+ community among sins of theft, hatred, jealousy and greed

Polish LGBT+ rights activists assemble outside a court which acquitted three women found not guilty of ‘offending religious beliefs’ in court (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Three human rights activists have been cleared in Poland after facing charges for sticking up posters of the Virgin Mary decorated with a halo in the rainbow colours of the LGBT+ pride flag.

The acquittal of Elzbieta Podlesna, Anna Prus and Joanna Gzyra-Iskandar - who were found not guilty of “offending religious beliefs” in court - signifies a major win for the LGBT+ movement in a nation campaigners deem the most homophobic member of the European Union.

In 2019, the three activists stuck posters up showing the Black Madonna of Czestochowa with a rainbow halo in the central Polish city of Plock.

Campaigners said this was a direct response to a homophobic installation of the Holy Sepulchre shown at the city’s St Dominic Church which placed the LGBT+ community among sins of theft, hatred, jealousy and greed.

Priest Tadeusz Łebkowski, whose complaint sparked the trial, drew parallels between the LGBT+ rainbow flag and the Nazi symbol of the swastika.

During a trial earlier in the year, Ms Prus sought to provide an explanation for her actions.

She said: “What I see is hatred, contempt, aggression. This is what I wanted to protest against because I didn’t want to lose another friend or colleague. I don’t want them or people I don’t know, who are vulnerable, to feel like they aren’t human.

“Silence implies consent, lack of protest implies acceptance. This is why I turned to my friends with a plea: Listen, we have to do something about this”.

Catrinel Motoc, of Amnesty International’s Europe Regional Office, said: “The charges should never have been brought against these women and it’s absolutely the right decision that they have been acquitted.

“They had risked up to two years in prison simply for standing up for LGBTI rights in a climate of hate and discrimination in Poland.”

Ms Motoc called for the authorities to stop using the criminal justice system to “target and harass” human rights campaigners over their activism.

The nation’s ruling Law and Justice Party is founded on a socially conservative, Catholic ideology and has waged a war on female reproductive rights.

Andrzej Duda, who has been president of Poland since 2015, has argued LGBT+ rights is an “ideology” more destructive than communism as well as promising to outlaw same-sex marriage and LGBT+ adoption rights during his election campaign.