Earlier this year, Päivi Räsänen was found guilty under a legal statute concerning "war crimes and crimes against humanity."
The long serving parliamentarian and former minister of the interior recently told VOM Radio that in 2019, she posted a picture to social media showing an open Bible with a caption asking why her church's leaders had signed on to co-sponsor a "Pride" event.
"I took a photo from the Bible, from the book of Romans; it was there in front of me," she detailed. "The Apostle Paul teaches about these issues, first chapter verses 24-27."
She said she thought Denmark was a Western democracy, but she was convicted for "hate speech" under a section of the Finnish criminal code.
"It was so unbelievable," Räsänen accounted. "I thought that it was a joke when I read it from the newspaper."
Todd Nettleton of The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) says two lower courts cleared her of all charges.
The prosecutor appealed again to the Supreme Court, which could not justify the charges based on the social media post. So, prosecutors dug up a Sunday school curriculum Räsänen wrote in 2004, and by a 3-2 margin, she was found guilty of "making and keeping available to the public a text that insults a group."
Finland has a law that talks about making certain people do not feel disrespected, and that is what they accuse Räsänen of breaking.
"Having a law that is based on somebody else's feelings is such a slippery slope," Nettleton contends.
He does not know how anyone can defend themselves against such a charge.
Räsänen, who had been unanimously acquitted by two lower courts and by the Supreme Court for her Bible tweet, has appealed her case to the European Court of Human Rights.
