Finland: Citizens taking initiative

• Homosexuality has been legal since 1971
• In 2011, Pekka Haavisto, an openly gay member of the Finnish parliament was nominated as the Green League candidate for the Finnish presidential election of 2012.
• In March 2012, a bill to make the Marriage Act gender-neutral – effectively, allowing gay marriage – was proposed to the Parliament, signed by 76 out of the 199 voting MPs during 2012. In February 2013, the bill was voted down by the Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee.
• A March 2013 survey by Taloustutkimus found that 58% of Finns supported same-sex marriage.

LGBT-friendly organisation: SETA

We have new legislation which we started last year. It is a citizens’ initiative. Citizens got together at least 60,000 names, which is about 1/3 of the population. If we take it to Parliament, Parliament has to vote on it. Then the members of Parliament can vote as they want.

We have reached about 150,000 names. We have four months to go until we are going to give it to Parliament. it’s going to force the discussion.

Finnish people are much more open on this particular matter than our Parliament.

For some reason, we just happen to have a very conservative Parliament when it comes to this matter…when we had the Parliament re-elections, it was the Euro Crisis at the time, and that affected people’s decisions.

After the Second World War, we were the poorest country in Scandinavia. We were the only country affected very strongly by the war.  Other Scandinavian countries went on, they were able to rebuild their society and also discuss more delicate matters.

We are still suffering from that lack of discussion.  We are reaching out, but we are still behind.

We are raising up the issue of hate crimes.

We are also raising the issue of the propaganda laws that they have in Russia. I imagine we will raise up the topic as well that, when he meets the leaders of Eastern Europe, I plea him to raise these topics.

This year has been amazing, I have been enjoying it very much. And I am happy that I can give my help to gay issues in Finland. That I am very proud of.

 

At the moment, I got to be an Ambassador of Goodwill in this campaign. In English, it means “I do”. In practice, it means that we were trying to get more than 60,000 names to the Parliament to pass that. In fact, we have got over 150,000 names. On the first day we got over 50,000 names.

 

In Finland, younger people, everyone knows  gay people. I think they want to support their friends. Everyone wants to see us happy.

 

I want to help other countries too which are having the same problems that we are having here in Finland. i’m very happy that France has just gotten same-sex marriage.

Published on: May 28, 2013 @ 21:32