We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in Europe (here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). The latest example of hate speech laws curtailing free speech is found in Finland where a politician is under criminal investigation for sharing a Bible verse to criticize a church for participating in a LGBT Pride festival.
Congresswoman Päivi Räsänen is a Christian Democratic member of parliament and former Minister of the Interior. Räsänen is also a member of and is married to a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland.
She was critical of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland for its support of the Helsinki LGBT Pride events in June. She spoke out against the involvement while highlighting a quote from Romans 1:24-27 which reads:
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 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.
According to the Helsinki Times, police have said that they will be filing the case with a prosecutor when their investigation is complete.
From someone who is a member a party called “Christian Democrats,” it should not be too surprising that she is engaging in either religious or political speech — or in this case religious political speech. Räsänen is opposed to abortion and has run on morality platforms. This is core protected speech in any nation that respected free speech. The fact that she could be investigated demonstrates how such laws create a chilling effect on speech.
We call Finland part of the “Free World” because Finns have fought and bled and died for their freedom. It’s a shame that their government and courts are even investigating someone for availing herself of the freedom to speak freely.
I suppose that the prosecutor will quickly dismiss the complaint.
Turley doesn’t know enough about Finland to write sensibly about it.
In my opinion and with all due respect.
Who in the world with a lick of sense would celebrate all this homo stuff??? Nasty vile predatory people who are trying way too hard to pretend they have nothing to be ashamed of. They have to pass laws against saying bad things about them because that is the only way to pretend people have accepted their horrible activities.
Now, since wasn’t Hans Christian Anderson from Finland, or one of those little countries, what is next??? A law prohibiting little boys from saying the Emperor is nekkid???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Wrong country Squeeky.
Stick to your own neck of the woods.
Squeeky – Hans Christian Andersen is from Denmark.
I knew he was from somewhere around there.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
More leftist tolerance for which they are well known.
Coming soon to a locale near YOU!
And the American left will gut the 1st Amendment with a straight face all while professing devotion to free speech.
antonio
What are Christian Democrats or even just Democrats to do? Stay in their own country. for starters. Not something of importance in our Constitutional Republic res publica of, by and for the citizens ….. oh! you mean the Socialists? They aren’t citizens they took allegiance to a foreign ideology. Besides the Socialists who claim to be Democrats do not allow religion in their Collectives.
The American Founders believed that rights and freedoms were natural and God-given. That means those rights and freedoms are universal. The universe includes Finland. Ergo, Fins enjoy the freedom of speech as delineated by the American Founders although they may not know it yet.
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1st Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
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Now you grasp the sheer genius of the American Founders. Freedom of speech means citizens may speak freely and insult anyone including the King; most certainly political and religious opponents.
Once you do grasp the genius of the Constitution, you realize that Congress may tax only for “…general Welfare…” not individual welfare, that Congress has the power to regulate only trade, exchange or “…commerce among the several States…,” that the right to private property denies Congress any power to claim and exercise dominion over or possess and dispose of private property and that the people retain every conceivable natural and God-given right and freedom per the absolute and unqualified 9th Amendment.
At that point of epiphany, you realize that the entire communist American welfare state is illegal, illegitimate and unconstitutional, including, but not limited to, affirmative action, quotas, welfare, food stamps, rent control, social services, forced busing, minimum wage, utility subsidies, WIC, TANF, HAMP, HARP, Dept.’s of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Labor, Energy, Obamacare, Obamaphones, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Social Security Supplemental Income, Medicare, Medicaid, “Fair Housing” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc.
Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto 59 years after the adoption of the Constitution because none of the principles of the Communist Manifesto were in the Constitution. Had the principles of the Communist Manifesto been in the Constitution, Karl Marx would have had no reason to write the Communist Manifesto. The principles of the Communist Manifesto were not in the Constitution then and the principles of the Communist Manifesto are not in the Constitution now.
The American Founders said, “Freedom” and they meant freedom.
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9th Amendment
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
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Article 1, Section 8
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
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Private property is “that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
So says a person whose interpretation of the Constitution is not accepted by the overwhelming majority of Constitutional scholars and citizens, myself included.
Perhaps you would care to mention precisely where and how my “interpretation” is wrong or does base ad hominem usually work for you.
Communism was forcibly imposed by a majority of Manifesto “scholars and citizens” such as Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. In the process, old “Uncle Joe” is credited with the deaths of 20 million people.
What you really mean to say is that you and your collectivist colleagues like communism, ergo, it is constitutional. You like it, so you’re going to do it, in spite of the literal “manifest tenor” of the Constitution denying it.
Please do; pick any paragraph (amendment or quotation) above and refute its clear, literal wording.
You can read English, right?
Why did Karl Marx write the Communist Manifesto if his cogitations already existed in the Constitution? All Marx would have had to do is cut and paste.
Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto 59 years after the adoption of the Constitution because none of the principles of the Communist Manifesto were in the Constitution. Had the principles of the Communist Manifesto been in the Constitution, Karl Marx would have had no reason to write the Communist Manifesto. The principles of the Communist Manifesto were not in the Constitution then and the principles of the Communist Manifesto are not in the Constitution now.
Abraham “Crazy Abe” had a duty to load the freed slaves on ships and summarily deport them as the Naturalization Act of 1802 was in full force and effect requiring citizens to be “…free white person(s).” You would “interpret” that bit of law to mean “Crazy Abe” and his anti-American, communist successors could dismiss the Constitution, ignore the Act and arbitrarily grant millions of illegal aliens citizenship.
When in Rome do as the Romans do?
When in native America, do as the native Americans – Peyote, Mescaline and Ayahuasca.
Oops. That doesn’t meet the standards of the refined, sophisticated and arrogant “dictatorship of the communist moralists.”
The Romans did drugs.
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What Drugs Were Used in the Roman Empire
“By the time the Roman Empire was established, opium’s soporific effects were without a doubt known and exploited in Rome. Its cultivation, harvest, and preparation were all well-documented. One Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was famously addicted to opium. The exact reasons as to why are debated. Some believe Marcus Aurelius used opium to overcome stress; Thomas W. Africa puts forward the argument that opium was an obvious form of escapism for the aloof Stoic, such that “Drugs incapacitated Marcus less than they insulated his natural reserve and fired his philosophic insight to the fever pitch of vision”.
This all suggests a total absence of taboo surrounding opium and opium use, at least amongst powerful Romans and doctors (and indeed, the case of Marcus Aurelius indicates that there was a symbiotic dialogue about the effects of opium between the two camps). The aforementioned paper, importantly, quotes Galen, and suggests that ideas about addiction and withdrawal were not yet formal medical concepts. I do not know how great the connection between the historic stigmatization (more specifically, illegality) of drugs and the understanding of their less desirable effects is, but I think it is a thought worth bearing in mind: that some Romans would have used opium to excessive or socially undesirable extents (such as suicide) without controversy.
For other substances, Celsus’ De Medicina is the greatest contemporary authority on various Roman remedies.
One interesting medicine was silphium. I read about this a long time ago – but I believe it was an contraceptive native to north Africa, specifically Libya. When the Roman Empire expanded to Libya, harvesting and trading silphium became so prolific that the plant went extinct. The Wikipedia page shows the sheer value and abundance of this particular substance in ancient Rome and is absolutely worth reading.
Ultimately, I believe drugs were relatively common in the Roman Empire with the fundamental two being opium and alcohol.”
– Reddit
Well, there’s a certain irony in that Martin Luther was excommunicated in 1521 for criticizing the Catholic Church, accusing it of nepotism and corruption. And now, nearly 500 years later, a Lutheran country is criminally investigating a citizen for quoting the Bible.
ha ha yes TIN
“plus ca change, plus le meme chose”
Now the Grand Inquistors are Leftist Apparatchiks not priests with hot tongs.
If you don’t think Political Correctness isn’t a religion, then you haven’t been reading its Cathechisms
here is a tool to search Campus Hate Speech Codes. These are the Catechisms of today
https://www.thefire.org/resources/spotlight/using-the-spotlight-database/
So let’s offer this Finnish Lutheran politician political asylum in the U.S., and air drop a few million WWMD? (What Would Martin Do?) wrist bands over Helsinki! 😹✈️ ✝️
The right to speak your mind is one of the most basic human rights.
“Karen S on September 5, 2019 at 12:15 PM. The right to speak your mind is one of the most basic human rights.”
No. People who say that are old fools who have a keyboard and WiFi and otherwise lead a sad existence.
Well, Jane, that certainly helped move the discussion along in a positive and civil manner.
Thanks so much.
FFS – Somehow the 2nd Amendment vanished since Trump was elected.
LOL Foxtrot
All of these incidents give you an idea of what the nexus of social workers, lawyers, mental health tradesmen, academics, and media-and-entertainment types think is the function of public discussion, not to mention who is a part of public discussion and who is always talking out of turn. But you don’t connect the dots, even though you’re on a law faculty and thus at ground zero.
If you just remember that in the ‘minds’ of the people you are observing, liberal hate is defined as ‘speech’ and non-liberal speech is defined as ‘hate’, you’ll be at least 20% of the way toward getting a clue.
I am free thinker and support lgbt rights. http://www.bhrigupandit.com
This is a commercial advertisement.
Darren, did the poster pay the Turley blog advertisement fee?
LGBT shouldn’t have special rights just because they’re queers
Please keep up posted on this. If the Bible becomes banned again in Finland what are the Christian Democrats to do?
Censorship is bad enough.
Censorship to destroy the political opposition is frightening.
We know how that story ends.
From now on they’ll just be called, democrats.