Tomorrow, Saturday, Mark Steyn on the Town, Mark's weekend music show will air at 5pm Greenwich Mean Time - which is 6pm in Western Europe and, for one more week only, 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific in North America. You can listen from almost anywhere on the planet by clicking the button at top right here.
~Mark is continuing to recuperate but will be back on duty over the weekend. However, the US Administration has now extended its deadline for "obliterating" Iran's energy infrastructure from two days to another five days to yet another ten days - April 6th. So, in this interlude before Armageddon, we thought we'd turn to the real war on the western front. This week saw the criminal conviction of another Mark Steyn Show guest, Finland's former Minister of the Interior Päivi Räsänen:
🚨BREAKING: Päivi Räsänen unanimously acquitted for her Bible tweet, but convicted of "hate speech" for a 20+ year-old church pamphlet
The conviction is under the "war crimes and crimes against humanity" section of Finland's criminal code, alongside Bishop Juhana Pohjola. pic.twitter.com/wr8s4YHeOB
— ADF International (@ADFIntl) March 26, 2026
During Steyn's travails with three of Canada's "human rights" commissions, upon his return to New Hampshire the border guard would inquire as to the reason for his visit to Ottawa, Toronto or Vancouver, as the case might be, and Mark would reply deadpan that the Canadian state was after him for crimes against humanity. Like so many of his cheap jokes, this one has now come true. Päivi Räsänen is a Finnish Christian who happens to believe the church's traditional teachings for two millennia on the LGBTQWERTY stuff. Many Finns might disagree with her position, so, naturally, the Supreme Court has stepped in to criminalise it.
The eminent jurists generously conceded that "it must be taken into account that the text forming the basis for the conviction did not contain incitement to violence or comparable threat-like fomenting of hatred. The conduct is therefore not particularly serious in terms of the nature of the offence." Big of them. Nevertheless, Dr Räsänen and her co-defendant, an actual bishop, were found guilty of having "made available to the public, and kept available to the public, opinions that insult homosexuals as a group on the basis of their sexual orientation".
As Mark likes to say, you can't beat something (which Islam is) with nothing (which is what "diversity" is). Here is Päivi Räsänen's first appearance on the Steyn Show in January 2022 - starting at 24-30 below:
Two months later, Päivi returned to Mark's show to update him on the case:
She also said this:
(For the full interview that day, see here.)
The Finnish state did not take its defeat well: They re-prosecuted Dr Räsänen thrice, and have finally secured their victory.
As Mark always says, the real battlefield is the home front.
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