According to the court, the writing was not related to preventing bullying at school, but expressed a negative attitude towards the sexual minority. The person who had shared the text on Facebook was also sentenced.
Middle Finland the district court sentenced three people to fines for writing insulting to gays. According to the court, they were guilty of incitement against a national group.
The editor-in-chief of the alternative publication, the author of the opinion piece and the person who shared the piece on Facebook were sentenced.
It was about an article published in 2019 in the online publication Right Media. According to the prosecutor, the writing described homosexual behavior as repulsive and disgusting, and homosexuality as distorted and against nature.
The defendants denied that they were guilty of a crime in the case. Editor-in-chief of the publication Jukka-Pekka Rahkonen admitted that he had accepted the article for publication, but denied that it was offensive.
According to the verdict, the other two defendants are relatives.
The author said that he heard about the experience of his relative’s child and decided to write a story about it. A relative of the author said that the writing was based on an incident at her child’s school. His accusation was based on the fact that he had shared the writing on Facebook.
Legal considered that the expressions used in the article were apt to arouse intolerance and contempt for gays and that it exceeded the permitted means of expression within the scope of freedom of speech.
“The parts of the text identified in the indictment have been homophobic in nature, and they have not been related to the alleged goal of the text, i.e. preventing bullying at school,” the court states.
Legal sentenced all three to fines for incitement against a national group.
According to the court, the editor-in-chief and the author of the article together made the offensive article available to the public, and they were both sentenced to a 50-day fine. The person who shared the article on Facebook was sentenced to a 25-day fine.
The verdict was handed down at the beginning of October. It is legally binding.
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