In a press release, shared on the 15th of September, Finnish parliament member, Dr Päivi Räsäne states that the Helsinki District Court has declared that the main hearing of the charges brought against her by the Prosecutor General (R 21/3567) will take place on 24th of January 2022, contrary to previous assumptions, according to which it would have taken place this autumn. 

The former Former Finnish Minister of the Interior is being prosecuted for a tweet from 2019, in which she shared a screenshot of verses 24-27 from the book of Romans chapter 1 from the New Testament, which says:

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

In her press release, Räsänen says the Prosecutor’s Office make her view out to be that “homosexuals are not created by God like heterosexuals” and that she would consider them inferior to other people. However, she is fully convinced of the contrary.

She writes:

“These statements are completely contrary to my convictions. I consider this to be an unfounded statement and also highly offensive to homosexual people. I have stressed many times that all human beings are created in the image of God and have equal dignity and human rights. All human beings are sinners and are forgiven of their sins by recourse to the atoning work of Jesus”.