Gay marriage

Ok,

so you updated me on some news about what's going on in the US (they do talk about what's going on in Ferguson in the newspapers some. Probably not nearly as much as there.) so I thought I'd catch you up with what's going on with the equal marriage law here in Finland. I don't remember when I've done that before, and I don't know how much you follow Finnish media, so I'm not sure how much of this you already know. But I thought I'd catch you up with this, so you can be properly pissed at our parliament when you get back. Because the bottom line is this:

It doesn't look good.

Ok, so starting from a year ago spring. This you know, because you were still here. They started gathering names for a civil motion (or what ever they call it in English), which was a new thing back then. The point is, that if it gets over 50 000 names, the government starts to actually think about making it into a law. Doesn't necessarily mean it will become one one day, though.

They reached 50 000 names in two days, if I recall correctly. I was in Australia at the time, so I'm not sure.

They handed the motion into government bureaucracy in the fall, with 16 000-something names. This I did mention to you.

Ok, so during the time since, the committee that prepares the motion to be voted about in the big hall with all the members of parliament present has listened to a lot of experts and advocates of some religious communities (which is pretty pointless, since nobody cares whether or not churches are willing to marry people or not. Not in this case, anyway.) and some other people. Not sure who all, but a lot of people.

Then they voted on whether or not they think the motion should pass and be made into a law. And I'm talking about a bunch of about 20 people or so. To the last moment it looked like it's going to be a tough vote, but that they'd probably vote for making a recommendation to the parliament to pass the motion.

On the day of the vote, there were 16 people present.

They voted against the motion 10-6, because a handful of people who would've voted for it were missing.

So, even with this setback, they're taking it into vote in the parliament some time in the fall. For a long time it has looked like it's going to be a tough vote, but that maybe there are a few people who are voting for it more than those voting against, so the motion would pass.

(Also, there's been some trouble with Perussuomalaiset, because Timo Soini had decided that even though this is a matter or personal opinion, everyone in their party should vote according to the party's official opinion: against. And everyone else was like "Dude, you can't do that. This is a matter of one's conscious, you can't force them to vote against that. No one else does either. Though I'm not sure how many of them is voting for it, anyway.)

And then.

And then came the the elections for the European Parliament.

As a result, a bunch of people from the Finnish parliament leave, and go to the EP instead, and the next in line from their party takes their place in the Finnish parliament.

Three of those are people, who were voting for the law to pass, have people voting against the motion taking their places. So now it seems like that those three people might be enough to turn the vote around, so that the motion will be denied, and people of the same gender still won't be able to get married.

So we're waiting.

And the most ridiculous thing is that at least in the law committee the reasons for voting against were stuff like "I can't vote for same-sex people to be able to adopt", or, even worse "This bill isn't done well enough. It's missing some vital information and assessment about how passing this ill will effect our country. It is coming straight from the people, and they don't know how to make a proper bill."
Yeah, well, you know what. That's your job. You take that thing that a bunch of people have worked their asses off and make it into a form that you can pass in the parliament. I mean, it does come from the people, of course it not a perfect and ready bill that you can just vote on! They're practically complaining about bad phrasing.

And at the same time, polls say that most of the Finnish population is all for the law. The parliament just doesn't seem to hear. Or care.

The crappy thing is, that it seems like Keskusta will be the biggest party in next year's parliament election, and they're a party that gets their most votes from the countryside, meaning older people that in Finland on average, meaning there's a good chance the bill won't pass as long as they're the biggest party. Which means it's either now, or the chances are it will be at least 5 years before a chance to get it through again.

So, I got annoyed by all this, and started gathering arguments for and against this in Opasnet. (It's in Finnish). It's still missing a bunch of stuff, because I just put that first stuff up there an hour ago, and then started writing.

So, yeah.
We're doing great here in Finland too.

~matu

PS. I apologise for the misused vocabulary. I'm not all too familiar with the terms having to do with this kind of stuff (even in Finnish), so I've probably used "bill" and "motion" and "law" all in wrong places or when I mean one of the other. So sorry about that, I hope you still understand what I mean!