In a shocking ruling delivered in Helsinki last week, the Supreme Court of Finland convicted Päivi Räsänen, a 66-year-old longtime Christian Democratic parliamentarian, and her Lutheran bishop, Juhana Pohjola, of hate speech for “making and keeping available to the public a text that insults a group.” The court ordered that the text, a 2004 pamphlet explaining and defending traditional Biblical teaching about homosexuality, must be “removed from public access and destroyed.” The High Court also dismissed hate speech charges against Räsänen for posting a Bible verse about homosexuality to X in 2019.
What this means is that it is now illegal in Finland for Christians to defend traditional Christian teaching about homosexuality. You can’t write or speak about the matter without risking arrest. This, in Europe, in 2026.
Räsänen, a physician by training, wrote the pamphlet in 2004 to inform debate within the Finnish Lutheran Church over the church’s policy on homosexuality and related issues, like gay marriage and adoption. Räsänen is theologically conservative, and explained at length traditional Christian teaching about sexuality and how, in her opinion, it should inform Christian thinking about the law.
