Finland’s Highest Court has ruled two Christian pastors who created a Christian marriage pamphlet in 2004 violated hate speech laws.
One of the “guilty” pastors 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.”
Finland Convicts Christian MP and Bishop Over Biblical Marriage Pamphlet – Standing For Freedom
In a stunning 3-2 decision, Finland’s Supreme Court found Finnish Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola guilty of “hate speech” crimes for co-authoring a church pamphlet about sexual ethics and biblical marriage and ordered it “removed from public access and destroyed.”
The justices convicted the two evangelical Christians under a 2011 section of the Finnish criminal code titled “war crimes and crimes against humanity” because they had “made available and kept available to the public opinions that insult homosexuals as a group on the basis of their sexual orientation.”
At the same time, the court found that “the text forming the basis for the conviction did not contain incitement to violence or comparable threat-like fomenting of hatred.” Nonetheless, it sentenced Räsänen and Pohjola to pay criminal fines of several thousand Euros, barred them from accepting any help in paying their legal fees, and ordered the destruction of all copies of the 2004 church pamphlet, as well as the deletion or redaction of all “impugned statements” located online.
