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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nBy AFA Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now that a long-running legal battle over a Finnish politician\u2019s right to free speech has come to an end, the lesson for Americans is to keep fighting for your First Amendment rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What began for P\u00e4ivi R\u00e4s\u00e4nen as a rebuke to the state church, way back in 2019, concluded with two separate rulings this week by the Supreme Court of Finland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the first verdict, the judges unanimously ruled in her favor that her social media post, which showed a Bible verse, did not meet Finland\u2019s definition of hate speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second court ruling, however, found her guilty of violating Finland\u2019s \u201chate speech\u201d law and fined her 1,800 Euros. Her supposed crime, upheld by the high court, was citing a religious pamphlet about marriage entitled \u201cMale and Female He Created Them.\u201d That pamphlet, which condemns homosexuality and calls it a mental disorder, was condemned by the court for unlawfully agitating a population group, referring to homosexuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The publisher of the pamphlet, a church bishop named Juhana Pohjola, was also found guilty by the Supreme Court. His publishing house was fined 5,000 euros, and he was ordered to remove the \u201cunlawful\u201d comments in the pamphlet that is still posted online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
R\u00e4s\u00e4nen and Pohjola have been represented by ADF International, an arm of the U.S.-based Alliance Defending Freedom legal organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reacting to the ruling this week, Sean Nelson, senior counsel at ADF International, reminded the \u201cWashington Watch\u201d audience that the ADF client began her fight with her own church after learning it was hosting a Helsinki \u201cpride\u201d event for homosexuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
R\u00e4s\u00e4nen, a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, the state church, has been described as a devout Christian who let church leadership know she disagreed with their affirmation of homosexuality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo she posted on Twitter,\u201d Nelson recalled, \u201csaying that she disagreed with that, that she didn\u2019t think the Bible taught that pride was a good thing, but that it was a sinful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bible passage R\u00e4s\u00e4nen shared, from the Book of Romans, is the Apostle Paul\u2019s condemnation of homosexuality as sinful. \u201cMen committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error,\u201d that passage reads in part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
R\u00e4s\u00e4nen\u2019s defense of an orthodox biblical belief represented a rarity in Finland. Only about 5% of Finns attend church services weekly, and Finland\u2019s support for LGBTQ rights ranks among the top ten nations in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the country\u2019s secular, post-Christian culture, R\u00e4s\u00e4nen was acquitted on criminal charges in not one but two back-to-back court cases, the ADF attorney pointed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey said the Bible is not illegal in Finland, and we\u2019re not going to make it illegal to talk about your faith,\u201d Nelson, referring to the lower courts, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because a criminal acquittal can be appealed under Finnish law, Nelson said the prosecutors, who had expressed terrible hatred for the Bible at the trial, did not give up. The prosecutors asked the Supreme Court to hear their appeal, which happened last fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a separate \u201cWashington Watch\u201d interview about R\u00e4s\u00e4nen\u2019s case, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said the Bible verse she posted is hardly controversial for any Christian to believe, but there is \u201cmassive censorship\u201d in Europe, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in the United States, however, Roy said he followed her legal fight closely because he watched Big Tech companies cooperate with the Biden administration during the Covid pandemic to police comments on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to get busy deciding how we want to live,\u201d Roy warned. \u201c Are we going to defend our Judeo-Christian culture, while maintaining Western values and maintaining the rights to free speech, and freedom of religion, and free expression, or are we not?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is an interesting outcome for their high court, as they didn’t outlaw the Bible verses, but they did make expounding upon them illegal with significant fines. A key bit of information is that 5% attend church, though the state church is trash as probably most others. There is probably a remnant of Bible believing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16501,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16499\/revisions\/16501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}