By Rachel Deitch
Earlier this week religious freedom activists and faith-based organizations gathered virtually from around the world for the third Ministerial to Advance Freedom of Religion or Belief. In 2018 and 2019 the Ministerial to Advance International Religious Freedom was hosted by the US State Department in Washington, DC and both events were the largest state-sponsored human rights gatherings in our country’s history. This year’s event (renamed to use the nontheist-inclusive and internationally-preferred term of “freedom of religion or belief”) was hosted by Poland at the US State Department’s invitation, and after some scrambling and postponements due to COVID-19, it was finally held virtually this week and AHA staff was able to participate.
If your brain got caught up at “Poland” and “religious freedom” being used in the same sentence, you are right to be confused. Humanists International’s Freedom of Thought Report names severe discrimination in Poland against humanists and religious minorities. And while our State Department and its International Religious Freedom Office emphasize blasphemy laws as grave threats to human rights around the world, Poland not only has a strict blasphemy law for which the penalty is imprisonment, but the law is enforced regularly. Only a few months ago, for example, Elzbieta Podlesna was arrested and charged with insulting religion because of her painting of the Virgin Mary with a rainbow halo in support of LGBTQ rights. And throughout the year, Poland’s draconian abortion laws and “LGBT free zones”—both of which are intricately tied to the Catholic Church’s control within government—have made international headlines. Yet the State Department handed hosting of the ministerial over to Poland when it could have tapped any nation in the world. That should be an embarrassment to all Americans.
This surrealism was evident throughout the event.
