Finnish lawmaker convicted of ‘insulting’ gays over 20 years ago

Finnish MP Paivi Rasanen was fined €1,800 over statements in a decades-old church pamphlet she had written.

The Finnish Supreme Court has found Christian Democrat MP and former cabinet minister Paivi Rasanen guilty of “insulting homosexuals” in a 2004 church pamphlet, in which she described gays as having a developmental disorder.

The conviction of the 66-year-old politician is based on a pamphlet titled ‘Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual relationships challenge the Christian concept of humanity’. A guilty verdict was also handed down to Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola, who was involved in publishing the text.

Rasanen was fined €1,800 ($2,100), while Pohjola received a €1,100 ($1,300) fine. The court also ordered the defendants to remove parts of the text that it ruled unlawful from the internet.

According to the ruling, the pamphlet insulted homosexuals as a group on the basis of their sexual orientation. In the publication, Rasanen argued that homosexuality constitutes a “developmental disorder.” The court stated that such claims amounted to incitement against a group.

The MP was acquitted on a second charge related to a 2019 tweet in which she accused the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland of “elevating shame and sin” for becoming an official partner of a gay pride parade.

Rasanen, a medical doctor, served as Finland’s minister of the interior between 2011 and 2015. She said she was shocked by the ruling and announced plans to consult lawyers about an appeal.

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“I am shocked and profoundly disappointed that the court has failed to recognize my basic human right to freedom of expression,” she said.

“I am 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,” Rasanen added. “A positive ruling would help to prevent other innocent people from experiencing the same ordeal for simply sharing their beliefs.”

The US-based Alliance Defending Freedom International, which represented Rasanen throughout the case, called the conviction “an outrageous example of state censorship.”