Issues related to sexual and gender minorities do not progress under the watch of Minister for Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade Ville Tavio of the Finns Party, a source within the ministry has told tabloid newspaper Ilta-Sanomat.
"There is confusion about what the Finnish policy is," the source told IS. "Finland has wanted to actively promote equality from the perspective of sexual and gender minorities, but there is a fear that we will fall into the wrong camp."
Helsingin Sanomat reported on Wednesday that Tavio will not allow anything related to sexual or gender minorities to be written into his speeches.
The HS report also noted that Tavio had referred to the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games as a "freak show".
In a statement to Finnish news agency STT, Tavio's special advisor denied that there were any instructions about mentioning LGBT matters in the minister's speeches, adding that Tavio spoke about such matters during a trip to Thailand in March.
Tavio has courted controversy in the past, with Helsingin Sanomat reporting last year that he has spoken in parliament on numerous occasions about the conspiracy theory that non-white people would demographically replace ethnic Finns — a reference to the controversial Great Replacement theory.