Finnish Politician Put On Trial Again For Posting Bible Verse After Already Being Found Not Guilty

Senior Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen is facing being hauled through the courts again over “homophobic” Tweets and writings going back 20 years, despite having been acquitted in the case twice already. The Finnish Public Prosecutor is appealing a November 2023 court decision that Päivi Räsänen, a long-serving member of Parliament, party leader, and former national interior minister was exercising free speech when she quoted the bible and discussed homosexuality on several occasions from 2004 to 2019. Räsänen is the former leader of the Finnish Christian Democrats Party and holds orthodox views on the issue, having described homosexuality as a “disorder of psychosexual development” in the past and quoted verses from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans on Instagram.

The District Court of Helsinki has already acquitted Räsänen unanimously on the hate speech charges in 2022, which were filed under the part of Finland’s criminal code which deals with “war crimes and crimes against humanity”, ruling “it is not for the district court to interpret biblical concepts”. This was appealed, taking it to the Helsinki Court of Appeal which again dismissed the case unanimously, and on the same grounds, in November of last year. The Public Prosecutor is now pushing the matter up to the Supreme Court, reports Finnish public broadcaster YLE, claiming it wants to settle the relationship “between freedom of religion and freedom of speech and the prohibition of discrimination, and when expressions must be considered as punishable hate speech”. The prosecutor is calling for hefty fines and censorship of Räsänen’s writings.