(CP) The Supreme Court of Finland confirmed Friday that Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen will face trial a 3rd time over her five-year-old Bible verse tweet that criticized the Finnish Lutheran Church for promoting LGBT “pride month.”
Räsänen, who led Finland’s Christian Democratic Party from 2004 to 2015 and served because the country’s interior minister from 2011 to 2015, is being dragged into court again despite having been acquitted twice by lower courts on hate crime charges, in line with a statement from lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International.
Police began investigating the grandmother of 11 shortly after her 2019 tweet by which she posted a photograph from the book of Romans and questioned how the Finnish Lutheran Church could agree with “shame and sin” being presented as “a matter of pride.”
Investigators also dredged up a pamphlet she published in 2004 with Bishop Juhana Pohjola of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, titled “Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual relationships challenge the Christian concept of humanity.”
In April 2021, after subjecting her to 13 hours of interrogation over several months, Finland’s prosecutor general used Räsänen’s tweet, pamphlet and a radio interview to charge her with three counts of “agitation against a minority group,” which falls under the umbrella of the “war crimes and crimes against humanity” section in Finnish law.
Pohjola was also charged for having published Räsänen’s pamphlet 20 years ago.
The Helsinki Court of Appeal unanimously acquitted Räsänen and Pohjola in November, which followed the same acquittal by the three-judge District Court of Helsinki in March 2022.
The state prosecutor is appealing their acquittal a 3rd time on two of the fees, demanding that the 2 face tens of hundreds of euros in fines and that their work be censored. Räsänen’s next court date has not yet been determined.
The situation has drawn international media attention and prompted outrage from human rights experts.
“In my case the investigation has lasted almost five years, has involved unfaithful accusations, several long police interrogations totaling greater than 13 hours, preparations for court hearings, the District Court hearing, and a hearing within the Court of Appeal,” Räsänen said in an announcement.
“This was not nearly my opinions, but about everyone’s freedom of expression. I hope that with the ruling of the Supreme Court, others wouldn’t should undergo the identical ordeal. I even have considered it a privilege and an honor to defend freedom of expression, which is a fundamental right in a democratic state,” she added.
Paul Coleman, executive director of ADF International, likened Räsänen’s case to something from the Middle Ages and warned of “creeping censorship” afflicting the historically free nations of Europe.
“In a democratic Western nation in 2024, no one ought to be on trial for his or her faith — yet throughout the prosecution of Päivi Räsänen and Bishop Pohjola, we have now seen something akin to a ‘heresy’ trial, where Christians are dragged through court for holding beliefs that differ from the approved orthodoxy of the day,” Coleman said.
The state’s persistence in going after Räsänen and Pohjola for nearly half a decade despite multiple acquittals is “alarming,” Coleman said, fearing “the method is the punishment in such instances, leading to a chill on free speech for all residents observing.”
“Their right to talk freely is everyone’s right to talk freely,” he added.
European governments have increasingly clamped down on speech critical of homosexuality lately.
Earlier this month, France’s gender equality minister Aurore Bergé called for the prosecution of Father Matthieu Raffray, a Roman Catholic priest who drew the ire of the state for describing homosexual inclinations as “a weakness” that have to be fought like all other sin.
In Malta, Matthew Grech faced criminal charges under the country’s conversion therapy ban last yr for giving his Christian testimony about leaving a homosexual lifestyle on a radio show. The radio hosts who gave him a platform were also charged.
Speaking about proposed anti-hate speech laws in Ireland that will apply to sexual orientation, ADF CEO Kristen Waggoner told The Christian Post in December that her organization perceives “a world trend toward censorship.”
“And it is not only a disregard without spending a dime speech; it’s an energetic targeting to silence speech by the federal government,” she said, adding that the United States will not be proof against such trends despite the U.S. Constitution.
