World Wide Wave

3 Jun 2013

Finland: Citizens taking initiative

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This week W3JOY met Mr. Gay Finland and the president of Finland’s LGBT organisation, SETA. They’re both on a mission to pass same-sex marriage.

“Finnish people are much more open on this particular matter than our Parliament,” explains Juha-Pekka Hippi, Chairman of SETA, LGBTI rights in Finland.

They are pushing a citizens’ initiative they have gathered about 150,000 names, more then enough to force Parliament to vote on same-sex marriage.

“It’s going to force the discussion.”

Why such a conservative Parliament? Mr Hippi believes it was because the Euro Crisis prompted more conservative voting. He also blames poverty after the Second World 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.”

When he meets with the Finnish president this Friday, Mr Hippi plans to discuss hate crimes and the propaganda laws that they have in Russia.

W3JOY also interviewed Janne Tiilikainen, Mr Gay Finland. Not only is he hot, he’s active. In gay matters, that is. At the moment, he is an Ambassador of Goodwill in the same-sex marriage campaign.In English, it means “I do”. They worked to collect 60,000 names to the Parliament and got over 150,000 names.And he wants to spread the love. “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.”

Perhaps he can visit us here in Melbourne and help with our campaign, too!