Have a look at this YouTube featuring Jani Toivola.
If you don’t know who he is, or anything about him, give
yourself a little test. Without reading
further down, click here and have a listen for a minute or two.
Click on CC if you want to know what he’s saying in English. Then ask yourself what language he is
speaking.
He’s got a warm smile and a terribly expressive face, and
he’s a pleasure to watch as he tells his tale of growing up as an outsider, and
the bullying he had to endure as a result.
And as he talks about coming to an awareness that he has to take charge
of his own life and not let it be governed by the bullies, my guess is you will
respond as I did, with admiration.
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| Jani Toivola, Green Party |
He’s black. He’s
gay. And he’s Finnish. Not just Finnish, but a member of the Finnish
Parliament, one of the 105 members who voted today (against 92) to grant full marriage rights to lesbian and gay people.
Toivola is a member of the
Green Party and, according to his web page (and given the caveat that I’m
working from a Google translation) interested in human rights and developmental
issues. He has traveled all over Finland
speaking to youth groups on the issue of pride and self-respect. He is also chairman of the board of the
Finnish HIV Foundation and a member of the Finnish Refugee Council, and the
Mental Health Advisory Board. Pretty
solid credentials. On paper, at least. I have no idea what he’s like in person. I just came across this mention of him this
morning when his picture appeared on the Buzz Feed website, being embraced by
Alexander Stubb, Finland’s prime minister.
When Rhode Island crossed over the line, I celebrated as a
New Englander. It became the sixth and final New England state to approve of this long-awaited
civil right. I feel Finland deserves the
same kind of recognition, since it follows Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden,
as the last-but-not-least Nordic country to do the same. And, after the decision Tuesday (Nov. 24th)
in Mississippi to remove the ban against
same-sex marriage there, it almost feels like we’re finally getting ready for
the big finish line victory, the right of lesbians and gays to marry in all
fifty of the United States. We watch
developments at the Supreme Court with bated breath. Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a stent put in her
heart the other day and that was a tad unsettling. It’s
hard to imagine the Supremes sitting on this decision without her around. It’s most certainly not a done deal and all
sorts of people are still throwing tacks in the road to slow the race down.
But one takes deep breaths at the failures and celebrates
the victories. You’d think it would get old, or maybe just a little bit ho-hum,
to mark all these landmark leaps forward in LGBT rights. It doesn’t.
Not for me. I mention Jani
Toivola because he’s part of the Finnish effort behind the same-sex rights
legislation there. Oras Tynkkynen, also
of the Green Party, was actually the first to put the idea forward. And there have been others; it obviously was not a one-person effort. In the end, even the center-right prime
minister supported it. The law will not take effect until 2016, alas,
but it’s done. And Jani gets to sit in
the sunshine as the current Green Party representative in the fight, as Finland
crosses over officially. I know nothing of the details, and would
mention others if I knew who they were.
Members of the left, the socialists (The Left Alliance) and
the environmentalists (The Green League) supported it unanimously (12 out of 12 and 10 out of 10, respectively) Social democrats, Finland’s labor party, were nearly unanimous (37 for, 2 against). At the other extreme the votes went the other
way. The Finnish equivalent to the Tea
Party, the Finns Party, had only one vote in 37 in support, and all six members of
the Christian Democrats voted against.
There is an interesting aspect of the struggle for gay
rights in Finland worth mentioning. As is
pretty much the case no matter where you look, homophobia in Finland is
centered in the churches. Just as many once grounded their anti-Semitism in religious scriptures, anti-gay bigotry today is likewise grounded in an understanding of scripture by folk convinced they are doing the
work of the Lord.
However, what’s going on
in Finland suggests that it’s not so simple anymore. You can’t just line up the church people on
one side and the non-churched on the other and think you’ve made a division
between the good guys and the bad guys. The line now splits the churches, at least in the modern democracies, right down the middle.
Four years ago, in October of 2010, the YLE, the Finnish
Broadcasting Company, televised a debate on the topic of same-sex marriage and
the right of lesbians and gays to adopt.
The debate took place on a Tuesday evening. By that Friday evening, so many people were put
off by the anti-gay remarks made by Päivi Räsänen, a
religious zealot, that some 7,400 of them had cancelled their membership in the church.
By Sunday, that figure had reached 18,000. Since the church in question is a state church,
and pastors’ salaries and other expenses are paid out of church taxes on members registered with the church, as was
once standard practice in other Lutheran countries in Europe, this move is
estimated to translate into a net annual loss to the church of some two million
euros. Bigotry costs.
But here’s where it
gets interesting. Whether it’s money
talking, a sincere change of heart on the part of a now critical mass of the
church’s members, or nothing more than an illustration of the sea change in
attitudes toward homosexuality now evident in all the modern democracies, Ms. Räsänen was roundly criticized.
Not just for being out of step, but actually for doing harm to the
church. By the Minister of Culture, no
less. Stefan Wallin, whose job includes
overseeing church affairs, suggested what she was up to was deliberately chasing gays out of the church. He was quoted as saying if Ms. Räsänen’s purpose was “to turn the clock back and reduce congregation
numbers” she needed to be up front about it and not “duck the consequences when
her selective view of humanity
influenced both the reputation and economy
of the church.” (italics mine)
Even the Finnish church’s leader, Archbishop Kari Mäkinen, has
complained about the bad rap the conservatives have given the church, arguing
the church is far more pluralistic than they would have it appear. Not only that, but Mäkinin was himself is a
strong supporter of the new legislation and wrote on his Facebook page today, “I
know how much this day means to the rainbow community, their loved ones and
many others. I rejoice with my whole heart for them and with them.”
The good archbishop seems to be caught in the middle. Not only is he criticized from the left for
being too slow to distance himself from the “Christian values” crusaders like
Ms. Räsänen, but then he has to deal with the likes of Ms. R herself, and others like her inside the church. Ms. R. seems to be undaunted by
her television debacle, which started the exodus from the church in 2010, when
over 83,000 Finns left the church, compared to less than 44,000 the year
before. She is the Christian Democrat
who led the battle against approval of today’s legislation, and is now going
down in flames. It's one thing for a bishop to differ with his parishoners over things; it's another when they are eating your church alive.
 |
| Bishop Bylund, Bishop Askola, Bishop Wartenberg-Potter, Bishop Christensen |
Unfortunately for the
church’s liberals, it is the hardliners and their loudly touted “Christian
values” who seem to be heard and taken more seriously. Many have had only a casual connection to the church, but stayed registered, either for sentimental reasons (what would grandma think?) or "just to be safe" like Pascal, or simply because they hadn't given it much thought and it "seemed like the right thing to do." But increasingly, these people are finding the church so irrelevant that the question has shifted from "Why leave?" to "Why stay?". They are slowly but surely slipping away, despite the
progress the church has made in keeping up with the human rights
awakening. Consider, for example, how
much more forward thinking European Lutherans are than Catholics when it comes
to women’s rights. The “four bishops,” above, are, from left to
right, bishops in the Lutheran church in Sweden,
Finland, Germany, and Denmark. And then consider how far beyond them secular Finland is. On the left is a picture of Jani Toivola being introduced to the President of Finland. And who's that next to him? Mr. Gay Finland, whom he had the temerity to dance with at the Independence Day Ball (below).
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| Jani Toivola, Mr. Gay Finland Kenneth Liukkonen, President Tarja Halonen |
Problem is, the
conservatives continue to live out their 19th century fantasies of
the perfect society as more in keeping with God’s plan than the ways of
today. Slavery is out. Galileo is in. One no longer gets the death penalty for
failing to register one’s membership in the Finnish state church. But women need to recognize God made them to
be subservient to men. And gays are just
plain evil. You know. 19th Century.
In the U.S., the National Organization for Marriage is on the rocks and
it’s 19th century folks who run the Catholic Conference of Bishops, the
Mormons, Baptists and Pentecostalists. But they too, at least some of them, seem to be slowly backing off on their
programs of demonization of LGBT people.
They may even be up to 1950 by the middle of this century. And by then, we may have forgotten about them entirely.
Finland, like the rest of Scandinavia and much of the rest of Europe, is there now.
This is Finland’s day in the sun.
Bravo Finland.
photo credits:
hyvä
Suomi is from Ilkka Turunen’s twitter at #tahdon2013 - my understanding is this is
a pretty good equivalent of “Bravo Finland”
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