Bravo Finland

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.

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. 24^th)  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

Jani Toivola,  Mr. Gay Finland Kenneth Liukkonen,
President Tarja Halonen

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).

Problem is, the conservatives continue to live out their 19^th 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.  19^th Century. 

In the U.S., the National Organization for Marriage is on the rocks and it’s 19^th 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:

Jani Toivola 

the four bishops

hyvä Suomi is from Ilkka Turunen’s twitter at #tahdon2013 - my understanding is this is a pretty good equivalent of “Bravo Finland”  

Jani Toivola with Mr. Gay Finland and the President

Dancing Queens

John Wesley writes to his wife

John Wesley statue by Samuel Manning and son

Imagine you are a woman, and you get a letter from your husband that reads:

Do not any longer contend for mastery, for power, money, or praise. Be content to be a private, insignificant person, known and loved by God and me….of what importance is your character to mankind, if you was buried just now. Or if you had never lived, what loss would it be to the cause of God.  

That’s an actual letter from John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, to his wife Molly, in 1774.   With the values most people hold today, that letter would constitute psychological wife abuse.

At the time, if you read the letter in its entirety, it’s clear that Wesley thought he was a good husband who simply had his priorities straight.  God first, and all the rest of us, way down the line, second.  It’s a one-sided view of their marriage relationship, since all you know of her is the way she is portrayed as something of a shrew in this missive by her husband.  He claims she badmouths his brother, but you know nothing of reasons she may have for doing so.  You know she has a temper and loses it regularly, and you know she has at least once fallen on her knees in guilt for having done so.  What hell this woman endured one can only imagine.

Wesley comes across as an arrogant man.  He writes to scold her, admitting that he doesn’t have his journal with the exact details of a fight they had earlier, and says he has only his memory to rely on.  He then adds, “and that (memory) is not very retentive of evil.”  Evil?  He’s describing his wife’s outburst as evil?

“Before we married,” he writes, “I saw you was a well-bred woman of great address and a middling understanding.”  You’ve got to love it.  You’re not too bright, woman, but at least you’re well bred!

Molly thought her husband was paying too much attention to other women, wondering, for example about a Mrs. Lefevre, whom Wesley describes as a “dove-like woman, full of faith and humble love.”  How dare you question, Wesley asks, “…if I did not lie with her.”  There’s Mrs. Blackwell, whom Molly insists “did (him) no good.”  Then there is the housekeeper, Sarah Ryan, who left their employ, says Wesley, because she could not stand Molly’s constant badmouthing of him.

All this could be seen as the everyday stuff of ordinary people experiencing the ups and downs of married life, and dismissed out of hand.  But not to be dismissed so lightly, it seems to me, is what Wesley makes of it as an assault on his authority as a man.  Moreover, here you have the founder of a major religious sect, and not just in the English-speaking world any more, displaying the pernicious doctrine that God uses people to teach other people lessons. 

God has used many means to curb your stubborn will and break the impetuosity of your temper. He has given you a dutiful but sickly daughter; He has taken away one of your sons. Another has been a grievous cross; as the third probably will be. He has suffered you to be defrauded of much money; He has chastened you with strong pain. And still He may say, 'How long liftest thou up thyself against Me 'Are you more humble, more gentle, more patient, more placable than you was I fear quite the reverse; I fear your natural tempers are rather increased than diminished. O beware lest God give you up to your own heart’s lusts, and let you follow your own imaginations!

In the same breath as he demands her submission and obedience to him he then uses his position as spiritual advisor to inculcate a belief that she is the source of her daughter’s illness and the death of one of her sons.   No apparent questioning of whether God was not punishing Wesley at the same time.  Just her, apparently, by giving her financial problems, and physical pain.  As she “lifteth” up herself against the Lord, she clearly “lifteth” herself up against her master, her husband, and God is not above surrendering her to her own “heart’s lusts” and “imaginations,” he tells her.

Twisting the knife he puts in her back, he then reminds her what an “unspeakable blessing” it is she has a husband “who can bear with it.”  That’s the place, by the way, where he goes into that bit about how insignificant her character is, that she should go to such extremes to defend it.  If she will just repent, he tells her, “…(t)hen shall I govern you with gentle sway, and show that I do indeed love you, even as Christ the Church.”

Ah yes, gentle husband.  Govern me.  Govern me.

Postscript:

I remember a time when I was in high school when I got into a discussion with somebody who had been schooled at the local catholic parochial school.  “We are followers of Jesus Christ,” she told me, “not like you, who follow Luther or Calvin.”  I realized just how much mis-education was going on in that parochial school.  “We don’t follow Luther or Calvin.  We follow the Gospels.  Luther and Calvin were ordinary men, not gods, not even heroes.  Founding fathers, yes.  Saints, no.”  I was proud of my pretty solid Protestant upbringing, and proud of the many particular traditions with which I had some familiarity.  John Wesley was another founding father, this time of the Methodist Church, as well as a whole bunch of off-shoots like the Nazarenes and the Holiness churches.

It was good to be a Protestant.  We knew of the corruption within the Roman church, the love of silks and satins and emeralds and diamonds the church leaders covered themselves in.  We knew all about the Inquisition, the abuse of Galileo, and the fact that St. Peter’s in Rome was built with money from indulgences – the selling of forgiveness of sins you hadn't committed yet.  We knew we were the good guys, the guys who had brought the church back to its original place and the source of the “good news” of Jesus Christ.

It would take many more years for it to sink in that for all our pretentions to a higher moral ground, historically speaking, there were missing parts in the Protestant narrative.  And those were the blind spots that had worked their way into our so-called doctrinal truths.  I remember the first time I buried myself in the bowels of the Green Library at Stanford and seriously read the works of Martin Luther – including the bits where he urges his people to burn the houses of Jews and run them out of town.  German anti-Semitism was not simply an aberration in German history.  It was grounded in the writing of its leading religious figure, the man who single-handedly created the modern German language, and one of Christianity’s leading reformers.  Later, I learned from Daniel Goldhagen (A Moral Reckoning) the source of that anti-Semitism is the Gospels themselves.

Now here are the clay feet of John Wesley.  Some will disagree with my take.  They will excuse him entirely on the grounds that he could not be expected to be ahead of his times.  Or they will simply agree with him that God wants women to submit themselves to men.  After all, that idea is alive and well in much of the world, far beyond the stretch of Methodism or Lutheranism, and it still rules in official Catholic doctrine here at home.

One need not throw out the church because of the follies of its leaders, of course.  There are plenty of other reasons to do that.  But neither should one go on too loudly or too long about tradition.  The traditions of our religious organizations have some very sinister aspects to them.  The Enlightenment and an advocacy of universal human rights didn’t come out of nowhere.  They came in response to the dark parts of our religious traditions.

“Traditional values,” ­­– the phrase is meant to be shorthand for all things bright and beautiful.

Until you take a closer look. And when traditionalists speak of the “founding fathers” (and this is true for religion as well as for political history) they intend to be understood as appealing to authority.

But check it out.  Some of the “greats” on whose shoulders we are supposed to stand may not be all that great.  Follow them, if you insist.  But follow with great caution.

photo credit

All Mascots Must Wear Underpants

You can’t make this stuff up.  All over the news this morning, picked up by all the agencies, is a bit of fundamentalist silliness from Poland. Apparently the good folk of Tuszyn - at least their elected officials - put their heads together in search of a mascot for a children’s playground, and came to the conclusion that whatever it was, it couldn’t be Winnie the Pooh because he’s a hermaphrodite.

Tuszyn, which Wikipedia informs us is a town of some 7,201 souls in Łódź East County, Łódź Voivodeship, less than two hours from the capital, is apparently still mired in the same mindset as the school board of Gilbert, Arizona. Remember them? They're the bozos who wanted to rip pages out of school textbooks that mentioned birth control.  In Tuszyn’s case, the problem is a naked teddy bear.  Both because he's naked and because he doesn’t have genitals.  According to one Tuszyn council member, "It doesn’t wear underpants because it doesn’t have a sex. It’s a hermaphrodite."

Now you know God didn’t put hermaphrodites in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve to ride around on dinosaurs or the Bible would have mentioned it.  Guess if you were born with questionable genitals, you’re the same sort of people as those born with an uncertain gender identity.  You’re possessed, in other words.  Wonder if Tuszyn was a sister city of Salem back in the 17th century.

The good folk of this Polish village have not pursued the question of whether Winnie the Pooh suffered from 5-alpha reductase deficiency; androgen insensitivity syndrome, aphallia, clitoromegaly; congenital adrenal hyperplasia; gonadal dysgenesis; mosaicism regarding sex chromosomes; ovo-testes; progestin-induced virilization; Swyer syndrome; Turner syndrome; or Non-Klinefelter XXY. They simply dismissed him tout court.  

Dumb twits.

There is no intelligence requirement to serve on a town council, God knows, or there would be a whole lot fewer town councils.  But where did this dunderheadedness come from?  My first thought was, this is Poland.  It’s got to be a Catholic notion that hermaphrodites (hermaphrodites? Seriously folks? Hermaphrodites?) are bad folk.  I know, I know.  Nobody on the committee actually said “according to my religious beliefs.” But it's highly unlikely the members of the committee belong to the Rodzimy Kościół Polski,  a group of traditional Polish, pre-Christian folk who believe that nature, not religious scriptures is important, and have a kind of live-and-let-live philosophy which puts stock in independent thinking and empathy for one’s fellow creatures.  Far more likely they are members of the church that centers morality on what you do with those things you hide under your underpants and are not supposed to use unless you’re making babies for Heavenly Father. (I use the Mormon term for Big Daddy now that the Catholics have teamed up with the Mormons to save the family.)   

But then again this church, which has a demonstrated sexual dysfunction problem and an unhealthy fascination with the naughty parts, to say nothing of priest-pederasts, celibacy as virtue, opposition to abortion, birth control and women in power positions (if I'm not being redundant here), may not be to blame for this one.

The Aleteia Organization, a conservative web-based Catholic information provider which takes the usual anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-euthanasia church line, informs us that the Church has no official position on hermaphroditism.  At least it’s not mentioned in the Catechism.  No papal statements. No Canon Law addresses the issue.  

According to Father Stephen F. Torraco of the Eternal Word Television Network, a TV network that provides round the clock Catholic answers, “Everyone has a right to be a member of one sex or the other, and... everyone has the right to have the inconsistencies of his sexual anatomy corrected by plastic surgery and/or pharmacological therapy.”  

Since Winnie the Pooh has no genitals to begin with, however, Father Torraco’s advice would seem not to apply.  There is no mention of adding genitals.

So where did this prejudice against children’s sexless toys come from, if not the church?  

Could be they’re just a bunch of silly people worrying about the fact that Winnie doesn’t have a weanie for their own personal reasons. I’m not sure this falls under the rubric of some serious Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden type whistleblowing, (and for a longer list of whistleblowers in history, click here  ) but somebody decided to record the meeting and leak it to the press. And that means we can attribute the folly to particular individuals.    

 

Hanna Jachimska, for example, blames Alan Alexander Milne for cutting off the Pooh’s testicles with a razor because “he had a problem with his identity (sic).”  

And Ryszard Cichy believes the fact that Winnie is naked is inappropriate for children.  

One has to ask whether Ryszard has ever seen a doll without her/his/its clothes on.

As Timothy McGrath, the author of the story in the Global Post, points out, once you eliminate all the cartoon characters who don't wear underpants (and are therefore arguably hermaphrodites) you're pretty much left with Goofy. And even then, I suspect if you were to take down Goofy's pants, you'd see that no underpants are the least of Goofy's problems, genitally speaking.  

You know those responses people give you when you ask a question to which the answer is obviously yes? Is the pope Catholic? Is the sky blue, is grass green, does a bear shit in the woods? Those are easy answers. The real question is whether, when he's done, he pulls his pants back up.

Wonder if there is a catholic answer for that?

Pooh Bear credit