WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Dozens of authors, artists and scholars — including writer Margaret Atwood and film directors Pedro Almodóvar and Mike Leigh— have expressed outrage at the hostility being directed toward LGBT people in Poland by the country’s president and other politicians.

In what they called a letter of “solidarity and protest,” they wrote to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, calling on the European Union to defend human rights values “being blatantly violated in Poland.”

“Homophobic aggression in Poland is growing because it is condoned by the ruling party, which has chosen sexual minorities as a scapegoat with no regard for the safety and well-being of citizens,” the letter said.

The letter, dated Monday, comes amid a bitter cultural clash in Poland, where calls for greater rights for LGBT people have been met with a furious backlash from the powerful Roman Catholic church and the right-wing ruling party, Law and Justice.

President Andrzej Duda, a party ally, won a tight reelection in July after a campaign vowing to defend the country’s traditional Catholic identity. He called the LGBT rights movement move dangerous than communism.

In the letter, also signed by Poland’s Nobel laureate for literature Olga Tokarczuk, came to the defense of activists who have been detained this month for protesting the anti-LGBT rhetoric.