Epistemiczna rola sądu w sprawach dotyczących osób LGBT w Polsce: Między prawem, stygmatyzacją a paniką moralną?

This article offers a sociological analysis of selected court cases concerning LGBT persons in Poland, treating them not merely as legal disputes but as particularly revealing manifestations of broader cultural, symbolic, and epistemic conflicts in contemporary society. The starting point is the assumption that in cases involving refusal of services, anti-LGBT campaigns, local-government resolutions targeting so-called “LGBT ideology,” and symbolic forms of protest against discrimination, courts do not simply apply legal norms in a technical manner. In order to issue a ruling, they must first assess the status of claims circulating in public discourse: distinguish facts from un s from stereotypes, opinions from defamation, worldview-based convictions from exclusionary practices, and political expression from symbolic violence. The article introduces the concept of the epistemic function of the court, understood as the institutional capacity to reorder public narratives and to define the boundaries between legally relevant claims and messages grounded in stigmatization, moral panic, and the delegitimization of minorities. The analysis is situated within the perspectives of the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of law, and theories of moral panic, stigma, and symbolic power. The empirical material consists of selected rulings and publicly available judicial justifications concerning, among others, the so-called “printer from Łódź,” anti-LGBT vans, anti-LGBT resolutions, and the “Rainbow Virgin Mary” case. The findings suggest that in such disputes, courts act not only as legal arbiters but also as key actors co-shaping the boundaries of legitimate language, public knowledge, and norms of equal citizenship. Under conditions of strong social polarization, courts perform a demystifying role by confronting fear-based, stigmatizing, and prejudicial narratives with evidentiary standards and constitutional principles of equality.