00:00:53.160You did so to express your faith, et cetera.
00:00:55.320Well, that all stands to change right now as Canada's already passed. C9 is waiting to go
00:01:02.240through the Senate and be signed finally into law by the prime minister who is raring to do it.
00:01:07.860And so I thought I would bring to someone who has lived that reality for more than two decades.
00:01:13.880Finnish member of parliament, Peve Rosinen, has been in that same struggle now for over 20 years.
00:01:21.700That 20-year struggle came to a head this past last March when she was indeed found guilty of hate crime after battling that in the courts, as I said, for over 20 years.
00:01:34.860She started this journey of hers, started in 2004 when she published a pamphlet that had to do with the teaching of Jesus Christ on the issue of homosexuality.0.64
00:01:50.520Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
00:01:57.940First of all, Mrs. Rosanen, I want to thank you because you have been such an example of standing for the truth of Christ, of his holy scriptures for so many years, despite the intense and unbelievable pressure coming from not only your government, your courts, but also even from some of the public in Finland where you've experienced all sorts of protests.
00:02:25.560So thank you on behalf of those who stand for life, who stand for family, stand for our Lord Jesus Christ and his truth.
00:02:38.700So why don't you give us to start with some of your background, both your family background in the faith, as well as your background as a politician.
00:02:46.860Okay, my background, it starts from the childhood that I spent in a small village near the eastern border of Finland, very near the Soviet Union border.
00:03:01.360And my father was working in prison and we were living in a village around the prison.
00:03:08.540And my family, my parents, they were very ordinary Lutheran people who were not so active church goers.
00:03:18.540But what was crucial in my life was that there was a Sunday school where all the children of the village attended.
00:03:27.540And very strong believers, two men were teaching in that Sunday school.
00:03:35.540And I remember as a very small girl about five years or six years when I understood in my heart that I'm also a sinner as the prisoners who were there also were.
00:03:53.540and i thought that someday i would even be in jail as well because and i remember i had an enormous
00:04:04.020joy when i was praying that jesus would forgive my sins and come to my life and lead my life and
00:04:13.940he has been faithful during these decades so my belief in in jesus started very early in in my life
00:04:23.540Of course, there have been many, many different kinds of events, but God has been faithful to me during the decades.
00:04:34.880You entered med school. This is one of the things that's rarely known about you because people know you as this activist, Christian MP, activist, but your background also is in medicine.
00:04:45.860Yes, I studied medicine and I also, I worked as a medical doctor for 10 years before my career in politics.
00:04:57.240And from quite early childhood, I had a dream to become a doctor and I loved to work, to work with patients and try to help them and so on.
00:05:11.760But at the same time, I felt a very strong calling to try to influence and impact on my society because I could see as working as a medical doctor how much there are different kinds of problems in our society and how the basis of the society, the values,
00:05:38.760how they affect to families and to individuals.
00:05:43.900And I would say that especially the issues about the value of life as a Christian doctor
00:05:50.260were those issues that draw me to politics,0.95
00:05:55.160because my priority was to defend the life of also the most weak people,
00:06:06.720for example, unborn children and elderly people. And I understood that it is the parliament where
00:06:18.540you can try to effect the development of the society and try to fight for the value of life.
00:06:27.040Beautiful. Now, did your work as a medical doctor also influence your decision or your
00:06:34.520partaking in this pamphlet, this pamphlet in 2004 that created all of this consternation.
00:06:40.800Tell us about the pamphlet, but also if you, as a doctor, that had any influence on you that way.
00:06:47.680Yes, absolutely. It had an influence. The pamphlet that I wrote, in fact, already 2003,
00:06:54.900It was published in 2004. It was a small Lutheran church that asked me to write about very topical issues about homosexuality and marriage and gender, which were big changes in our society.
00:07:17.860because just at that time in the beginning of the 20s we had a debate about the partnership law
00:07:28.020or between same-sex couples and also about the same-sex marriages and the church wanted to have
00:07:39.540some kind of educational material to congregations so that I would write as a member of parliament,
00:07:49.460as a Christian, as a mother of five children and also as a medical doctor about this issue.
00:07:57.460And of course, in all these roles I wrote, it was this small booklet, pamphlet, only 23 pages, and the title is Male and Female, He Created Them, and Homosexual Relationships Challenge the Christian View of Man.
00:08:21.860so this this was this was the beginning of of this my legal case now i remember being on a
00:08:31.980committee with in fact around the same time on a committee of the uh called forth by the bishops
00:08:39.640of the province of ontario and canada when we were passing uh or going to pass our same-sex marriage
00:08:46.060law. They wanted to have a discussion between media leaders, medical professionals, politicians,
00:08:54.720as well as lawyers, legal people around the same issues. And I was, just because of where I was
00:09:02.880sitting, I was one of the first to speak. And I said, look, this issue has really nothing to do
00:09:09.720with marriage. It has all to do with getting societal approval for homosexual sexual acts,0.96
00:09:17.260homosexual relationships, if you will. And that's why they're pushing this because I happen to be0.85
00:09:21.500in the chat rooms of homosexual activists because we wanted to get the inside information.0.75
00:09:27.580And they didn't want to get married. They didn't want to get actually married. They had very little0.52
00:09:31.580time for exclusive relationship anyway. But they definitely wanted societal approval for their
00:09:38.940activities, if you will. And I urged, I told the bishops who to the, you know, this was our message
00:09:47.280to the bishops. I told them, this has very little to do with marriage. It has to do with getting a
00:09:52.300societal stamp of approval on this behavior. So the way to confront it will be to use the evidence
00:09:58.600that you have from psychology, from medicine, and from the spiritual realities that this behavior
00:10:05.760is very harmful. And the doctor who was sitting next to me totally concurred because she said in
00:10:12.200her practice, she had to deal with the results of the harm to the body that homosexual sexual0.97
00:10:21.500activity causes. And she described it not in grave detail, but in enough to get people to0.88
00:10:26.600understand, oh my gosh, there's actual real physical harm. And so the idea was to tell the
00:10:33.220bishops, hey, you have an opportunity here to say, we love you, men and women afflicted with
00:10:40.840homosexual inclinations, desires, whatever. We love you enough to tell you this is harmful.0.68
00:10:46.580It's harmful for your body. It's harmful for your mind. His psychology will tell you.
00:10:50.200But from our perspective as the bishops, we know it's harmful for your soul. We love you enough
00:10:55.360to tell you it's harmful for your soul and for your body, even though the world is going to call
00:11:01.720us haters and bigots for saying this. They never did it, unfortunately. They only talked about
00:11:07.400marriage, the greatness, the glory of regular heterosexual marriage. They avoided the topic
00:11:12.540of homosexuality almost completely. And of course, they not only did they lose the fight,
00:11:18.360but there was hardly any consideration because they never spoke to the actual issue.
00:11:21.900But love to hear your experiences at the time. I agree with you. And
00:11:26.340And the main point in this my booklet is that the Bible is very clear when we think about homosexuality.
00:11:40.560God has created all people as his own image, and we have the same value, whether we are homosexuals or heterosexuals, we have the same value as the image of God.
00:11:57.560But we are also sinners, and it is God who says what is sin and what is not.0.72
00:12:04.560For example, in the book of Romans, in its first chapter, Apostle Paul tells very clearly that the same-sex relationships, they are sinful and they are shameful.0.99
00:12:16.220And they are also harmful for the people, especially to their soul, but also to their mind and to their body.0.99
00:12:25.220And that was the message in this booklet 20 years ago. I was not yet charged for or blamed for this, but this criminal case, my legal case started about seven years ago when I published a Twitter update where I took the photo from the Bible, from the book of Romans.
00:12:53.440and its first chapter where Apostle Paul teaches about these issues.
00:12:58.440And I targeted my criticism to the leadership of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church
00:13:05.440because the bishops of the Church decided in public to support the Pride event.
00:13:14.440And it was a shock to me and I thought that it undermines people's trust on the Bible
00:13:20.440And that's why it is so dangerous also for the LGBT people, because also for them it is the most important issue that they can find the truth and they can find also the gospel, the message of gospel and forgiveness and trust in the Bible.
00:13:43.120And then the process started, someone made a criminal complaint about my Twitter update, Bible tweet, and when it came into public that the police started to investigate the case,
00:14:02.440Then someone found this old pamphlet over 20 years ago and also made a criminal complaint about this.
00:14:14.960And the prosecutor general ordered the police to continue the investigations, even though the police said that they didn't find any crime in this pamphlet.
00:14:26.320But this process has been long. I have been in Helsinki District Court. I was acquitted both for the Bible feed and for the pamphlet case.
00:14:42.420But the prosecutor appealed to the Court of Appeal.0.99
00:16:11.180And I also said in this pamphlet that homosexuality is a psychosexual developmental disorientation.
00:16:21.780And the Supreme Court decided that it is hate speech, if you say so.
00:16:33.780Even though when I studied medicine, it was very clear that this was the description.
00:16:43.780And when I wrote about it, I tried to understand these people.
00:16:47.780And in court, the main point of the prosecutor was that if you speak about sin in the context of homosexual relationships, it is hate speech against those people.
00:17:03.780So I think that what Bible teaches, it is love speech.
00:17:08.600It is from God's love that he wants to show and direct also to those people who have these
00:17:55.440because I think there's two things happening here that are most stunning,
00:17:59.600and I think the large majority of our viewers are Catholics,
00:18:02.500And we're undergoing something very similar to what you're describing in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Finland, because at this time, many bishops in America, but especially in Europe, including getting some weird messages from Rome as well, are going down that same path of a kind of getting in line with the society the way it is.
00:18:30.820it is anti-scriptural, but it seems they don't care. They want to look to be loving and, you
00:18:38.420know, and accepting and so on. And yet the fact that it goes against the Holy Bible, against the
00:18:44.760words of God himself, they don't seem to care. And in fact, in some ways, as in your case,
00:18:54.380That is what is opening up the legal prosecution and even the condemnation of society upon the Christians.0.74
00:19:05.080Because when your own leadership, when your own bishops are the ones who are refusing to quote the Holy Bible, are not supporting the prophets of our day, who are actually speaking the truth, that's when society says, aha, we can go after them now.0.51
00:19:24.120So I see that very clearly. You must have seen now the Pope Francis meeting with Father James Martin, who's the biggest promoter in the Catholic Church of the LGBT agenda. Pope Leo just met with him as well. As an outsider, as someone in the Lutheran Church looking at the Catholic Church, have you seen, uh-oh, does that alarm you at all? Or what are your thoughts there?
00:19:54.120I think that the situation in our church is much more worse because in our church there are many pastors who marry same-sex couples and our bishops would like to change also the laws in our church that they could marry these couples.
00:20:21.020and they do not punish those pastors who very openly marry same-sex couples.
00:20:30.620For me, it is quite difficult to estimate the development in Catholic Church
00:20:39.020because in Finland we have quite a small Catholic Church
00:20:42.760and I know the bishop of the Finnish Catholic Church
00:20:54.500And I think that in Finland, those Catholics that I know, they are in very much the same line as me.
00:21:03.900For example, we were together campaigning for the value against abortion and against euthanasia and so on.
00:21:15.200So, but it is a very small community in Finland, but I have to say that from my perspective, I appreciate them, but I'm very disappointed with the leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Finland.
00:21:34.240But it is very sorry to hear that there are also similar tendencies in the big Catholic church in other countries.
00:21:45.980But perhaps there are differences between different bishops.
00:21:53.960But like you were just describing, those who promote homosexuality, promote, you know, they're doing same-sex couple blessings already officially.
00:22:04.240But those who promote those things are not punished, are not, you know, corrected. And so it is leading many of the faithful astray, which is really sad. Now let's turn to politics, because you also then experience this sort of persecution via the police, but they're being ordered to do it by the prosecutor, as you said.
00:22:26.720But this also has an effect on the population, if you will. You've had demonstrations against you. Tell us about that.
00:22:35.940I have been over 30 years in Parliament, and I have been in many very public debates about this issue.
00:22:45.940For example, in 2010, we had a big TV show in our national TV.
00:26:50.480They are all, of course, grown up now.
00:26:54.500And by the way, my grandmother of 12 very lovely grandchildren.
00:27:00.840And there are three more on their way.
00:27:05.260coming so it has been such a blessing in my life and I feel so privileged that all my family my
00:27:16.300children and my husband especially and and my grandchildren and and the sons of law
00:27:25.200they have all supported me they are Christians by heart and they pray for me and send me Bible
00:27:34.020verses to to encourage and so on so but uh yes i i remember when when uh when our children were
00:27:46.340still at home and and i was i was in public there were there were also some attacks against
00:27:56.580our home and some threatenings of my children. And of course, it was the most frightening
00:28:07.060side of this, but God protected us. And I have discussed many times with my children,
00:28:18.340and they feel that they had a safe childhood.
00:28:21.900so can you describe for us one of those attacks on your home there was some little bomb in our
00:28:31.560mailing box for example it was blown and and then there there came people who threw eggs to our
00:28:41.520draw and then there were also some people who tried to enter our home
00:28:48.180But the worst thing was when there was a pedophile, a man who was convicted for abusing children.
00:29:00.180And he tried to threaten my children, but the police could get him and he was then in jail.
00:29:12.180He didn't come to physical contact with my children, never, and they never saw him.
00:29:19.180But he sent me messages, letters where he threatened my children and told that he knows how he could harm my children.
00:29:31.180And I know that after that he harmed other children.
00:29:36.180so he was angry because i tried to make child sex material illegal this is exactly where
00:29:46.880you know christians have to stand it's when those situations come up which threaten you personally
00:29:53.640your safety your children's safety your family safety i mean that's where honestly i think
00:30:00.500so much the christian community is grateful for your example for your family's example because i
00:30:05.660know that it's a challenge, a harm to them as well. So to your family as well, we're very grateful
00:30:16.120for your example. It's been, for so many of us who are facing similar things, it's been for us
00:30:23.120a beautiful example of courage, of the willingness to stand for Christ and his truth, despite any of
00:30:28.280the stuff that comes our way. As you're watching this play out, because Finland was one of the
00:30:34.840early countries doing this. Canada was too, but we're coming to more of the same idea now of
00:30:41.920criminalizing even the scriptures. As you're watching this play out in the rest of the world,
00:30:48.520in Canada now and elsewhere, what are your thoughts and what would be your message to
00:30:55.400the Christian populations, the Catholic populations in the other countries?
00:30:59.780Yes, I have two messages. First, to politicians, you should be very careful when there are proposals of so-called hate crime laws.
00:31:15.500Because in Finland we have the law about agitating against minorities, and that is the law that I was convicted breaking against it.
00:31:30.640And the problem is that these laws, they are vague. They are so unpredictable.
00:31:37.020They can be used against almost anyone. It depends on who are in power.
00:31:42.640And now, when we have, I would say, in the office of our prosecutor, and in many, for example, our mainstream media, the LGBT advocates, they are very powerful.
00:31:59.000And so it is possible then that these hate speech laws, they can be used now against Christians, against those very classical biblical views.
00:32:15.180And that's why I think that also in Finland we should change the law.
00:32:20.780It is not a good law because it is so difficult for people to understand that what is the line between illegal and legal speech.
00:32:32.440For example, in my case, there have been altogether nine judges who didn't find any crime from this booklet.
00:32:43.040But then there were three judges who found. In the Supreme Court, it was a very narrow voting. Two judges voted in favor of me, but three convicted me.
00:33:00.160And in these lower courts, they unanimously acquitted me.
00:33:08.420So this is the problem, and that's why I want to warn about these kind of laws.
00:33:14.160They are used against ordinary Christian beliefs.
00:33:19.220But then I would like, the other message is that I want to encourage, especially Christians, that now is the time to speak.
00:33:33.660It is not the time to be silent or self-censorship, because the more we are silent about these contradictory issues of today, the narrower becomes the space for these freedoms.
00:33:49.220So it is not a good idea to try to be silent and try to be nice so that you do not speak about these issues that someone may find insulting.
00:34:05.220Of course, I have not intended to insult anyone, but when we speak about freedom of speech and freedom of faith,
00:34:15.840and we do not need the freedom of speech when we all agree about all issues, we need it when we disagree.
00:34:25.780And when someone might feel insulted, I have felt many times to be insulted for my Christian views,
00:34:35.780but still I think that those people have their right to speak and also to criticize me and my views.
00:34:45.780So my message, especially to Christians, is that you should boldly preach and speak about these biblical teachings and about Jesus.