Former Finnish Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen, who has been tried and unanimously acquitted by two courts, has had her free speech case appealed to the country’s Supreme Court. The prosecution calls for tens of thousands in fines.
Räsänen, a medical doctor and active parliamentarian, was first investigated in 2019 for a tweet that questioned the involvement of her church in a Helsinki LGBT ‘Pride’ event, with reference to the Bible’s Book of Romans, chapter 1, verses 24-27: “The men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”
Police also investigated a 24-page booklet Räsänen created for her church in 2004, in which she discussed the Biblical view of homosexuality, marriage, and the family’s role in society. For this, she was tried in 2022 alongside Bishop Juhana Pohjola for “agitation against a minority group,” a form of criminal ‘hate speech’ that in Finnish law falls under the heading of “war crimes and crimes against humanity.” Both were acquitted, after a Helsinki court stated that “it is not for the district court to interpret biblical concepts.”
Prosecutors appealed the case to a higher court, which in November 2023 confirmed the lower court’s acquittal.
“The Supreme Court appeal decision totally surprised me,” Räsänen said:
I am confident and calm. I am ready to continue to defend free speech and freedom of religion before the Supreme Court of Finland, and if need be, also before the European Court of Human Rights.
This was not just about my opinions, but about everyone’s freedom of expression. I hope that with the ruling of the Supreme Court, others would not have to undergo the same ordeal. I have considered it a privilege and an honor to defend freedom of expression, which is a fundamental right in a democratic state.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF International), the legal advocacy group that successfully challenged a Brussels-area mayor’s attempt at shutting down the NatCon conference earlier this week in a Belgian court, has been coordinating her legal support, and will continue to do so.
Commenting on the Supreme Court appeal, ADF International’s Executive Director Paul Coleman said,
This is a watershed case in the story of Europe’s creeping censorship. In a democratic Western nation in 2024, nobody should be on trial for their faith—yet throughout the prosecution of Päivi Räsänen and Bishop Pohjola, we have 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.
In an earlier commentary on the case for The European Conservative, ADF International writer Sofia Hörder said:
[T]he rules of what can and can’t be said are continuously rewritten by those in power … dangerously vague and inherently subjective ‘hate speech’ laws lend themselves all too easily to legal abuses with very real consequences.
