Town shocked by ‘homo’ logo

24th July 2010

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The sleepy hill town of Nowy Sacz found itself embroiled in a controversy over homosexuality and devil worshipping owing to a new emblem designed to promote the town.

Aiming to show the town in a new light, the symbol shows an open, multi-coloured hand with a black square in the centre of the palm. Under the hand comes the slogan “Nowy Sacz brings you good fortune”.

While innocuous to many, the hand has been blasted by one local cleric as a sign of both homosexuality and Satanism.  

“The colours of the rainbow, as everyone knows, are a symbol of the gay minorities,” said Father Robert Wiecek, who runs a pastoral care centre for young people in the town, which lies close to the Slovak border. “A black dot tattooed on the inside of the hand is a symbol of devotion or surrender to Satan.”

The priest said that it would have been better to have an image of Saint Margret, the town’s patron saint, on the new logo or a mountain to symbolise Nowy Sacz’s geography.

But claims that the new logo could promote homosexuality and devil worshipping have surprised the town’s authorities with Ryszard Nowak, mayor of Nowy Sacz, saying that he was shocked by the response of logo’s critics.

He explained that “An open right hand is the international symbol of goodwill and agreement, and the rainbow colouring of the hand is a sign of the town’s multiculturalism.”

The black square on the palm, apparently, symbolises the town hall lying in the centre of Nowy Sacz’s market square, which is the second biggest square in Poland after Krakow.

Mr Nowak added that the symbol, which was designed by the Krakow-based company Papajastudio, would not displace the town’s traditional emblems such as Saint Margret who appears on the town’s coat of arms.
The debate over the emblem, which has already appeared on the Nowy Sacz official website, bears a similarity to one that erupted in the eastern city of Bialystok two years ago.

Bialystok had also opted for an open hand but then dropped the emblem after allegations of plagiarism. It turned out that the city’s hand bore an uncanny resemblance to the logo of an umbrella group in New York that also represented gay associations.