Pompeo urges protection of non secular freedom in allied international locations overseas

NASHVILLE, Tennessee — The US ought to defend non secular freedom all over the place, together with in ally international locations equivalent to NATO membership-seeking Finland , in keeping with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo .

Pompeo mirrored on a Helsinki courtroom dismissing incitement fees in opposition to Christian Democratic Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen final spring after Finland’s former inside minister criticized the Finnish Lutheran Church for sponsoring a 2019 LGBT pleasure occasion.

"Once you see issues like this, the place free speech is trampled on and its sister, its cousin, non secular freedom, is trampled upon, on this case, that is a step backwards," Pompeo informed the Washington Examiner. "The US ought to handle that and name it out wherever we discover it."

As former President Donald Trump 's high diplomat, Pompeo stated the earlier administration "tried to try this with buddies, with adversaries, and with these of us in between."

"Non secular freedom goes hand in hand with freedoms extra broadly and extra steady nations as properly," he stated. "There is a deep connection between non secular freedom and nationwide safety."

Rasanen's trial alarmed at the very least 5 U.S. senators , who expressed issues to Ambassador-at-Massive for Worldwide Non secular Freedom Rashad Hussain that her profitable prosecution might create a "secular blasphemy regulation" to persecute Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Rasanen did distance herself from a separate 2004 pamphlet through which she wrote homosexuality was “a dysfunction of psycho-sexual improvement."

Pompeo equally underscored the significance of non secular freedom, a key organizing precept of his State Division , throughout his keynote speech final weekend on the Religion and Freedom Coalition's Street to Majority convention. There, he acquired the group's Ronald Reagan Defender of Freedom award.

Throughout his remarks, Trump's former CIA director and a possible 2024 Republican presidential candidate described "the decay inside our nation" because the nation's most urgent problem. He reiterated that sentiment backstage throughout a one-on-one interview.

"Once you lose these establishments that, in my judgment, had been central to creating the USA of America the best nation within the historical past of civilization, when these issues start to disintegrate, once they not carry out that connective duty that they've, the capability to place human beings involved in ways in which construct households and construct communities, you run actual danger," he informed the Washington Examiner. "And we're seeing that in the present day."