One tweet, three trials, and a test of religious speech

What started as a tweet with a Bible passage about sexual morality escalated into a criminal complaint, police interrogations, and dozens of hours spent preparing for and attending multiple court hearings. Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen says that even though prosecutors are trying to twist her faith into a message of hate against homosexual people, her six-year legal battle is “not in vain.”

This Thursday, Räsänen faces her latest hurdle as she heads to Finland’s Supreme Court for a hearing. She will once again fight for her free speech rights, even though Räsänen has already received two unanimous acquittals of hate speech charges against her, once from a district court in 2022 and then from the Helsinki Court of Appeal in 2023.

The Supreme Court justices will consider whether the politician has committed a crime by publicly sharing her beliefs. Räsänen—a medical doctor, longtime member of Finnish Parliament, former interior minister, and grandmother—told me in an interview that her mind is calm as she heads to court.

“I’m praying for the third victory,” Räsänen said. “I have seen how God has used this [process]. It has opened up many chances and possibilities … to bring the message of the gospel to audiences that I would never have reached without these accusations.”

Räsänen’s 2019 tweet questioned the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland’s official sponsorship of a local LGBTQ pride event and shared a photo of Romans 1:24-27, which discusses types of sexual sin. Räsänen said she hoped her social media post would encourage people to look to and trust the Bible.

A few weeks later, police received a complaint about her post and launched an investigation. They interrogated the politician multiple times for a total of 13 hours and repeatedly asked her to explain what the verses meant. Police also questioned her about the creation story in Genesis and how her Biblical beliefs on marriage tied into this, she noted.

Räsänen said the interrogations felt ironic as just a few years before, she had worked as the cabinet minister in charge of police.

In 2021, Finland’s then-Prosecutor General Raija Toiviainen charged Räsänen with “agitation against a minority group,” categorized as hate speech under the Finnish Criminal Code section addressing “war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

In addition to Räsänen’s tweet, prosecutors targeted remarks she made on a nationally syndicated Finnish public radio program and a 23-page booklet she released in 2004 titled “Male and Female He Created Them.”

Authorities also charged Bishop Juhana Pohjola, who published Räsänen’s booklet through the Luther Foundation Finland, a ministry arm of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland.

After a district court dismissed the charges against Räsänen in 2022, prosecutors appealed. Unlike in the United States, Finnish law does not protect citizens from double jeopardy, or continued prosecution for the same charges even after being acquitted.

After Räsänen’s win at the Helsinki Court of Appeal, prosecutors appealed to the nation’s highest court in 2024, asking it to review Räsänen’s tweet and pamphlet but dropping the charge dealing with her radio show appearance. Prosecutors are seeking tens of thousands of euros in fines and demanding that authorities censor Räsänen’s publications.

If Räsänen loses, the legal precedent could be disastrous, said Lorcán Price, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom International, which represents the politician. Europe doesn’t have the same constitutional free speech protections the United States has, Price explained. Instead, speech rights are protected by the European Convention on Human Rights Articles 9 and 10. But the European Commission is pushing to make “hate speech” a European Union–level crime to protect people from so-called offensive views, he said.

“At the core of [this case] is a religious question as to whether or not you can share a Christian view on sexual ethics, sexual morality,” Price said. “That’s really what this case is all about. Can you speak the truth as you see it freely, even if it might offend somebody, or will you be prosecuted for hate speech?”

Price also noted that Räsänen’s hearing on Thursday is unusual since Finland’s Supreme Court typically reviews cases by examining previous filings, not by listening to in-person testimony. If the high court rules against Räsänen, she could appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, Price said. If Räsänen wins, this will be the end of the road for prosecutors, as they have no right to appeal to the Strasbourg court.

Räsänen said that despite the grueling legal process, she has found motivation by seeing how her case has reached new audiences with the gospel. This month, she received an email from a man who used to be an atheist, she said. He first contacted her in 2019 and expressed anger at her Biblical beliefs. But she shared about her faith in an email exchange with him, and he eventually told her that she had helped him become a Christian.

Räsänen added that she hopes her story will encourage other Christians in Europe not to censor themselves out of fear of prosecution. “The more we are silent about these controversial issues, the narrower becomes the space for these freedoms,” she said. “It is not in vain to be in this process. It is not in vain to defend freedom of speech and freedom of faith. It is not in vain to defend the Biblical teachings.”