After years of prosecution, a parliamentarian named Päivi Maria Räsänen and a bishop in Finland have been found guilty of hate speech by Finland’s supreme court for their 2004 publication criticizing homosexuality, for which she was fined about $2,000. Copies of the pamphlet and references to it must be destroyed. Many U.S. Christians have decried the ruling as an assault on religious freedom and for evincing increased European hostility to Christianity.
These concerns are valid but miss the larger picture. Governments should not criminally punish any kind of speech, whether Christian, anarchist, Marxist, Muslim, nudist, or Buddhist.
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