Finland’s Supreme Court found a member of the country’s parliament guilty of inciting hatred by calling homosexuality a “developmental disorder.”

A U.S. anti-LGBTQ+ Christian nationalist organization defended the member of parliament and accused the court of “censorship.” The member of parliament has pledged to appeal the decision up to the European Court of Human Rights.

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The court fined Päivi Räsänen of the Christian Democrat political party €1,800 ($2,073.67) for republishing a 2004 pamphlet — entitled, “Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual Relationships Challenge the Christian Understanding of Humanity” — on her Facebook page in 2019 and on her website the following year.

The pamphlet — which was published by Lutheran bishop Juhana Pohjola, reproduced on the Luther Foundation Finland website in 2004 and the Finnish Evangelical Mission Diocese website in 2007 — included various religious views, including Räsänen’s belief that her church shouldn’t participate in Pride Month events.

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However, the court’s ruling concerned sentences that described homosexuality as “a disorder of psychosexual development” and a “sexual abnormality,” which were notable considering that Räsänen is a physician. All major U.S. medical and psychological associations agree that homosexuality is both natural and not a result of disordered human development.

In its 3-2 ruling, Finland’s Supreme Court said that its decision didn’t concern the pamphlet’s religious statements or beliefs. Rather, its ruling declared that Finland’s laws on religious freedom and hate speech don’t allow people to make untrue medical claims about a particular demographic, even in a religious context.

Two lower courts had acquitted Räsänen on all charges, but the Finnish government appealed those rulings, and the legal proceedings have now continued for over five years.

The U.S.-based Christian nationalist legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which has been certified as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, defended Räsänen.

The ADF argued that the charges against Räsänen violate Finland’s constitution’s free speech rights and pledges as a signatory to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

However, the ADF didn’t explicitly mention the court’s ruling on her false medical claim about gay people, nor did the editorial board of The Washington Post in its opinion article, calling the court’s ruling a “free-speech farce.”

The U.S. Embassy in Finland also criticized the ruling, calling it “troubling” in a social media post on X. But Eero Hyvönen, the chair of the Council for Mass Media in Finland (the Finnish media sector’s self-regulatory body), told the publication YLE that the country continues to protect free speech rights.

Hyvönen said that criticism and offensive opinions are acceptable forms of free speech, but that misinformation that targets or discriminates against a particular group of people is not.

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