On Thursday, The Federalist posted an article about Finland’s standards for ‘hate speech.’
The article reports:
In a decision released this morning, Finland’s supreme court voted 3-2 to convict a bishop and a member of parliament for publishing a pamphlet explaining Christian theology about sexual differences. The decision could tacitly ban orthodox Christianity in Finland by banning Christians from speaking about what the Bible clearly says.
Bishop Juhana Pohjola and Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen face thousands of euros in fines and their challenged Christian speech “removed from public access and destroyed,” the court ordered, unless they successfully appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. If they appeal, the case could affect speech and conscience rights worldwide.
…The ruling is the latest in a growing pattern of anti-Christian speech repression spreading across formerly Christian European countries. England now jails more people per day for alleged speech crimes than Vladimir Putin’s Russia, according to a former U.S. ambassador, even imprisoning and prosecuting people for praying silently on public property.
The article concludes:
Last year, the Trump State Department tweeted that the prosecution of Rasanen was “baseless.” In 2021, members of Congress asked the U.S. Commission on International Human Rights to sanction Finland over this case, and human rights advocates asked the U.S. Treasury secretary to sanction Finland for violating human rights with this prosecution.
President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance have also publicly rebuked Europe over its increasing speech repression, but those policies have not abated.
The right to free speech in Europe has been eroding for a some time. In October 2018, I posted an article about Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff who was charged with hate speech for teaching a course about Mohammad that included identifying him as a pedophile (story here).
The policy of denying free speech will come to America unless we are alert enough to stop it. The concept of ‘hate speech’ is not compatible with the concept of free speech. The main problem is that ‘hate speech’ is in the eye of the beholder. What Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff said was true, but that did not stop it from being considered hate speech.