Christianity is not yet outlawed in Finland, despite the unrelenting efforts of militant LGBT activists and their allies in the judiciary. In a decision issued on 31 March, the Helsinki District Court upheld the right to free speech by dismissing all charges against Päivi Räsänen, a prominent Finish politician, former leader of the Conservative Party and former Minister of Interior affairs.
The Finnish Prosecutor General had brought three criminal charges against Mrs Räsänen in April 2021. The medical doctor, mother of five, and grandmother of ten was accused of having engaged in “hate speech” for publicly voicing her opinion that homosexual relationships, which many consider are intrinsically immoral, must not be put on a par with the marriage of a man and a woman. Mrs. Räsänen had expressed this view in 2019 in a tweet directed at the leadership of the Finnish Lutheran Church, which in questions relating to human sexuality has given up following the Holy Gospel in order to instead adhere to the teachings of contemporary LGBT-agenda. She had reiterated these comments during a radio debate. The Prosecutor General furthermore brought charges with regard to the fact that Mrs. Räsänen had made these statements already in a pamphlet on marriage and family she had published back in 2004. A Lutheran Bishop who at the time had distributed the pamphlet omong his flock was also persecuted.
The Prosecutor General, a lady with impeccable pro-sodomy credentials named Raija Toiviainen, had made these charges despite the fact that the police officers dealing investigating the matter had explicitly urged her to drop the case, given that what Mrs. Räsänen had said and written was simply the reiteration of well-established Church doctrine. Indeed, it appears that Mrs. Räsänen´s alleged crime simply and solely consisted of quoting a passage from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans, in which the Apostle describes the consequences of unbelief. The refusal to acknowledge God as the Creator of all things results in a sinful life. The passage runs thus:
“The wrath of God is indeed being revealed from heaven against every impiety and wickedness of those who suppress the truth by their wickedness. For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse; for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks. Instead, they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened. While claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of an image of mortal man or of birds or of four-legged animals or of snakes.
Therefore, God handed them over to impurity through the lusts of their hearts for the mutual degradation of their bodies. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
Therefore, God handed them over to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper. They are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and spite. They are gossips and scandalmongers and they hate God. They are insolent, haughty, boastful, ingenious in their wickedness, and rebellious toward their parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know the just decree of God that all who practice such things deserve death, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them
Rom, 1, 18-32
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Given the specific circumstances of the case, (and despite the pro-LGBT prosecutor´s unconvincing attempts to deny it), that the true target of the criminal proceedings was not Mrs. Räsänen and her pamphlet, but Christianity at large: failing to embrace the teachings of LGBT it must be pushed back into the catacombs. This attack on religion and religious freedom is happening not in the Soviet Union under Stalin, not in Albania under Enver Hoxha, not in North Korea under Kim Jong Il, not in Afghanistan or Saudi-Arabia, but in a “liberal democracy” in Northern Europe, which takes great pride in its human rights standards.
The fact that persons can be subjected to police investigations and criminal persecutions when they merely make reference to sound Christian teaching is terrifying – all the more so because the substance of these teaching, i.e. the repudiation of sodomy and similar sexual perversions, is commonsense also among many non-believers. Even if the charges against Mrs. Räsänen have in the end been dismissed, they could have a chilling effect on free speech and freedom of conscience in Finland. This chilling effect will persist unless the persons responsible for Mrs. Räsänen´s ordeal will themselves face punishment.
The fact that the prosecutor´s office was condemned to reimburse 60.000 Euro of legal costs to Mrs. Räsänen is a first step to re-establish justice, but hardly sufficient. Instead, General Prosecutor Toiviainen should be dismissed from her office and herself criminally prosecuted for what constitutes a manifest human rights abuse and deliberate abuse of office, as suggested by ten prominent US lawyers in an open letter to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
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