- Päivi Räsänen was convicted in a 3-2 ruling over a 2004 pamphlet describing homosexuality. The court acquitted her over a separate 2019 Bible verse post on X.
- The case began after five criminal reports between 2019 and 2021, leading to charges against Räsänen and Bishop Juhana Pohjola for incitement of hatred against a group.
- Critics say the ruling blurs the line between protected religious speech and criminal hate speech, raising concerns that vague standards could create a chilling effect on public expression.
In a 3-2 vote last week, Finland’s Supreme Court found a parliamentarian and her Lutheran bishop guilty of hate speech for “making and keeping available to the public a text that insults a group of people.”
The court fined her 1,800 euros ($2,077) and ordered her passages to be destroyed and taken down.
The text in question was a pamphlet that the member of parliament, Päivi Räsänen, wrote in 2004. It said, “The Church is in great peril where it is tempted to demonstrate its approval of homosexual relationships.”
It also included a passage that quoted Finnish psychiatrist Asser Stenbäck, who said, “Life contrary to anatomy is unnatural.” Räsänen then wrote, “Sexual anomalies do not include the gift of creation, but are developmental disorders that can also be healed.”
Finland’s highest court ruled that Räsänen’s latter statement was incorrect.
In the same ruling, the court acquitted Räsänen of allegations that a 2019 X post, featuring a photo of scripture (Romans 1:24-27), was hate speech. She had directed the post at her church, after they sponsored a Pride event.
Räsänen has been a member of the Finnish Parliament since 1995. She is reportedly considering an appeal to her conviction in the European Court of Human Rights.
What followed the tweet’s initial criminal complaint?
Citizens filed five criminal complaints against Räsänen between 2019 and 2021. The complaints referenced a tweet, a radio appearance and the pamphlet, and accused her of hate speech.
A prosecutor general filed three charges against her in 2021. Her bishop, Juhana Pohjola, was also charged for publishing the pamphlet. Their alleged crime — “agitation against a minority group” — is listed beneath the “war crimes and crimes against humanity” section of Finnish criminal code.
In the investigation period, Räsänen sat through 13 hours of police interrogations over several months.
During the interrogation, Räsänen said police asked her, “What is the message of the book of Romans and its first chapter?” and “What do I mean by the words ‘sin’ and ‘shame’?”
The next year, Räsänen and Pohjola sat through two days of trial, and on March 30, 2022, their district court unanimously acquitted them, ruling, “It is not for the district court to interpret biblical concepts.”
In April, the prosecution appealed the district court’s ruling and demanded Räsänen’s pamphlet be censored. The next fall, a court of appeals heard her case and again acquitted her. The prosecution appealed again, resulting in the Supreme Court’s ruling last Thursday, which declared Räsänen guilty.
After the verdict, Räsänen said, “I am shocked and profoundly disappointed that the court has failed to recognize my basic human right to freedom of expression. I stand by the teachings of my Christian faith, and will continue to defend my and every person’s right to share their convictions in the public square.”
Where is the boundary between legal and criminal speech?
During the Finnish Court of Appeals trial, a state prosecutor, Anu Mantila, said, “You can cite the Bible, but it is Räsänen’s interpretation and opinion about the Bible verses that are criminal.”
Human rights lawyer Robert Clarke responded to the ruling and this sentiment in the magazine First Things, last Friday.
He argued, if judges cannot agree on where the boundary lies between legal and criminal speech, citizens cannot be expected to know either; the result is a chilling effect on expression.
If eleven trained judges cannot agree — after years of argument and hundreds of pages of legal briefs — where the boundary between lawful opinion and criminal insult lies, then no ordinary citizen can be expected to know either. A criminal law that is unclear about what it prohibits is not a law anyone can fairly be expected to obey. Instead, it becomes a tool to be wielded to suppress disfavored speech.
— Robert Clarke in First Things
Austria-based executive director of Alliance Defending Freedom International, Paul Coleman, added, “Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of democracy. It is right that the Court has acquitted Päivi Räsänen for her 2019 Bible verse tweet. However, the conviction for a simple church pamphlet published decades ago — before the law under which she has been convicted was even passed — is an outrageous example of state censorship. This decision will create a severe chilling effect for everyone’s right to speak freely.”
Graham Linehan, an Irish comedian who was detained by British police last September over several X posts, recently testified during a House Judiciary Committee hearing about what he sees as censorship’s chilling effect in Europe.
Responding to a question from Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., Linehan said, “Who knows what effect it (censorship) has?”
“There’s more than one form of censorship. It’s not just the government being heavy handed,” he said. “It’s a sort of an orthodoxy that has been imposed across British society, especially in certain industries that attract very privileged middle class people — publishing, theatre, the media — all of these institutions have been captured by gender ideology. Just the fact that no one is objecting to it does not mean that people don’t object to it.”