A Finnish politician has been found guilty of hate speech by the country’s Supreme Court in a narrow 3-2 decision, on a charge relating to the expression of her beliefs on sexual ethics and marriage contained in a 22-year-old pamphlet she produced with her Church.
Paivi Rasanen MP was criminally convicted today alongside Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola for publishing the 2004 pamphlet, ‘Male and Female He Created Them’, in which were contained passages the court deemed to be “insulting” to a group of people on the basis of its sexual orientation.
The court also ruled today to acquit Ms Rasanen on a separate charge, related to a 2019 tweet in which she cited a passage from St Paul’s Letter to the Romans as justification for her views on human sexuality.
She was previously unanimously acquitted on all charges by two lower courts.
However, following multiple appeals from the State prosecution, the case eventually made its way before Finland’s Supreme Court, which today delivered its split verdict.
The conviction is for “making and keeping available to the public a text that insults a group” and comes under a section of the Finnish criminal code titled ‘War crimes and crimes against humanity’. The relevant section states:
“A person who makes available to the public or otherwise spreads among the public or keeps available for the public information, an expression of opinion or another message where a certain group is threatened, defamed or insulted on the basis of its race, skin colour, birth status, national or ethnic origin, religion or belief, sexual orientation or disability or a comparable basis, shall be sentenced for ethnic agitation to a fine or to imprisonment for at most two years.”
Despite the court’s acknowledgement that “the writing on which the charge is based did not contain incitement to violence or comparable threatening incitement of hatred” and that the conduct is “not particularly serious in its type of crime”, it nevertheless ruled that the statements contained in Ms Rasanen’s and Bishop Pohjola’s writing “have otherwise insulted homosexuals as a group on the basis of sexual orientation”.
The Supreme Court imposed criminal fines of several thousands of euros, and ruled that the condemned document is to be “removed from public access and destroyed”.
Commenting after the judgement, Ms Rasanen said that she was “shocked and profoundly disappointed that the court has failed to recognise 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,” she said.
She added that she is currently taking legal advice on a possible appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
“This is not about my free speech alone, but that of every person in Finland. A positive ruling would help to prevent other innocent people from experiencing the same ordeal for simply sharing their beliefs,” Ms Rasanen said.
Ms Rasanen previously faced trial in 2022 at the District Court of Helsinki and in 2023 at the Finnish Court of Appeal. On both occasions, she was unanimously acquitted of all charges related to the 2004 pamphlet, the 2019 tweet and for comments made during a 2019 radio debate on the same topic.
Despite the previous acquittals, the State prosecutor appealed the case to the Supreme Court, dropping the charge regarding the radio debate.
Ms Rasanen’s defence was coordinated by legal-advocacy organisation ADF International, whose Executive Director Paul Coleman said “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,” he said.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that Finnish government ministers from Rasanen’s party and the nationalist Finns Party have called for freedom of speech and legislative changes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision.
“The law on incitement against a group should be amended,” Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavio of the Finns Party is reported as saying.