A shocking and unexpected ruling came from the Supreme Court of Finland this week, convicting a medical doctor for writing a church pamphlet “insult(ing) homosexuals as a group.”
After seven years of lawfare and legal acquittals, Päivi Räsänen, a medical doctor, Lutheran pastor’s wife, longtime member of the Finnish Parliament, and former Minister of the Interior was convicted for writing the pamphlet. Bishop Juhana Pohjola who commissioned the booklet, and the Finland Lutheran Foundation that published it, were also convicted.
The Finnish Supreme Court, by a razor thin vote, found that they “made available to the public and kept available to the public opinions that insult homosexuals as a group on the basis of their sexual orientation.” The judgment found them guilty under Chapter 11 of its criminal code, “War crimes and crimes against humanity.”
It was unexpected because, two previous prosecutions of the same defendants on the same charges ended in unanimous acquittals. But Finland allows state prosecutors to appeal acquittals. So, after subjecting them to triple jeopardy, the vicious prosecutor finally managed to eke out a 3-2 conviction.
The church pamphlet at issue was one of a series covering various doctrines. Published long before “same-sex marriage” laws (2004), it simply expounded the biblical teaching on marriage. But two decades after its publication, the Finnish Supreme Court exercised line-by-line censorship and decreed that 11 statements contained in it must be “removed from public access and destroyed.”
Additionally, the publishing foundation was fined $5,750 while Bp. Pohjola and Dr. Räsänen were fined $1,265 and $2,070, respectively.
The Court applied Section 10 of the code that criminalizes anyone “who makes available to the public . . . an expression of opinion . . . 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.”
At the time of its passage, virtually no one considered the potential for a conflict between “religion or belief” and “sexual orientation.” Far less did anyone imagine that such a conflict would result in criminalizing doctrine that had been included in the Bible for more than three millennia.
But “vague and subjective laws can be interpreted however you want,” explained Matti Sankamo, Räsänen’s Finnish defense counsel, in a press conference on Thursday. Indeed, this point is driven home by the history of the litigation itself.
In the first trial, none of the three judges agreed that Räsänen’s pamphlet insulted anyone. Again, in the second trial, none of the three judges considered her writing a crime. Even in this third trial, three of the six judges wanted to acquit. But the third judge did not have a formal vote. So, the vote was recorded as 3-2.
That is the thinnest of margins to fine a religious publishing house, an author, and a preacher of the Bible. Nevertheless, the verdict is official and sent shock waves through the European Union and beyond. Anybody who wants to say anything at all will have to consider whether a judge might consider it “insulting” in some dystopian future.
If a book that was written more than two decades ago can bring fines and imprisonments through an ex post facto law, is anyone safe writing anything? And if government censorship can reach back 21 years, what is to keep it from reaching back 21 centuries? That puts the Bible itself on the burn pile.
The verdict from Finland is relevant for Wyoming in three ways.
First, the very same vague language that was contorted to silence free speech in Finland is scattered in various city ordinances and state agencies in Wyoming.
So called “anti-discrimination laws” are designed to chill whatever speech the government might disfavor. As long as they remain on the books, they can be reinterpreted to put any business or individual in legal jeopardy.
Second, while the American Library Association continues to gaslight us with claims that moving adult content out of the kids’ section is tantamount to book burning, you can bet on its simpering silence in the face of a national supreme court that actually commands books to be “removed from public access and destroyed.”
Third, as the globalist censorship machine muzzles ever more foreign citizens, what about the American-owned companies that publish these books?
The Luther Foundation Finland has links to the Lutheran Heritage Foundation based in America. Just as Europe’s Orwellian Digital Service Act is used to throttle free speech online, this ruling sticks a camel’s nose into the entire publishing world.
Wyoming is a long way from Finland. But the seeds of its toxic censorship have sprouted already in Cowboy State soil.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email: JLange64@protonmail.com
