Professor William G. Otis, Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University and former Special White House Counsel for President George H. W. Bush, discusses the Trump indictments with Princeton Politics Professor John B. Londregan.
Law professors and scholars are calling on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to pressure the State Department to sanction Finland’s prosecutor general for prosecuting a Christian politician who shared her biblical beliefs on sexuality and marriage.
The Prosecutor General of Finland has undertaken criminal prosecutions that will compel Finland’s clergy and lay religious believers to choose between prison and abandoning teachings of their various faiths.
First, Prosecutor General Raija Toiviainen has charged Dr. Päivi Räsänen, a Member of the Finland’s Parliament and former Finnish Minister of the Interior, with three counts of “ethnic agitation” for peacefully expressing her views on marriage and sexuality. The charges against Dr. Räsänen stem from her authorship of a 2004 booklet entitled,
Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual Relationships Challenge the Christian Concept of Humanity, published by the Luther Foundation. In the booklet, Dr. Räsänen argues that homosexual activity should be recognized by the church as sinful based on the teachings of the Hebrew Bible and Christian scripture.
Ten academics and human rights advocates, including a former chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, called on the Biden administration Friday to sanction Finland's top prosecutor after she filed charges against Christians who declared what they believe the Bible says about homosexuality.