by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - A Finnish Member of Parliament is under investigation for expressing the biblical view of sexuality in a series of television interviews, police charging her with "hate speech" in a case that civil liberties groups are seeing as a harbinger of ill-fortune for free speech.
Päivi Räsänen, formerly the Finnish Minister of the Interior from 2011 to 2015, also posted Romans 1:24-27 in a tweet in 2019 as she questioned the Finnish Lutheran church's support for an LGBT pride event in light of its official, biblical position on homosexuality.
“In a free society, everyone should be allowed to share their beliefs without fear of censorship,” said Paul Coleman of Alliance Defending Freedom International, who reported on the civil liberties dimensions of the case.
“This is the foundation of every free and democratic society. Criminalizing speech through so-called ‘hate-speech’ laws shuts down important public debates and poses a grave threat to our democracies," Coleman explained.
Less than a third of Finns believe in the God of Christianity, according to a survey by the Church Research Institute, though more than three quarters are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland.