The trial against Finnish Christian politician Päivi Räsänen, accused of hate speech towards minorities for citing the Bible concerning gay people, may be a new step in the intensifying persecution of Christians in Western democracies.
A few facts prove this to be true.
The first one is that this is the first time when a politician of such high status is being prosecuted for expressing Christian doctrine concerning human sexuality.
Räsänen is the former head of the Finnish Christian Democrats and a former minister of the interior. She is now an MP and was chosen to her country’s parliament in 1995. She is one of the most prominent conservative politicians in Finland, and it seems that her lawsuit has a political dimension.
This is proven by the fact that the police which conducted the initial investigation emphasized that Räsänen’s tweet from 2019 was not a reason to enact action against the politician. The tweet had an attached photo of a Bible text which included a fragment of the Saint Epistle to the Romans:
“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”
#kirkko on ilmoittanut olevansa #seta n #Pride2019 virallinen partneri. Miten kirkon oppiperusta, #raamattu sopii yhteen sen kanssa, että häpeä ja synti nostetaan ylpeyden aiheeksi? pic.twitter.com/cnjAQCrOc2
— Päivi Räsänen (@PaiviRasanen) June 17, 2019
The police declared that there was no hate speech in the Bible “per se”, as otherwise it would be forbidden. The prosecutor’s office, however, rejected the results of this investigation and returned them to the police and filed a lawsuit.
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