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Same-sex marriage is now legal in Finland

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sazzy

Member
Congrats to Finland on improving your already superb human rights record.



All that means is the legislative in Finland can legally take same sex marriage rights away, where as in the US it is something that is protected under the constitution.

SCOTUS can strike down the previous ruling easily.

Legislative actions are much harder to undo than judicial actions.

IMO Finland chose the better route to providing marriage equality to its citizens.
 

GCX

Member
All that means is the legislative in Finland can legally take same sex marriage rights away, where as in the US it is something that is protected under the constitution.
When the law is in place, it's infinitely harder to reverse though. I can't think of any examples from recent Finnish history where human rights law like this would've been repealed.

That's why the people against gay marriage wanted to fast track the petition to keep marriage between man and woman. Now that the new law is in place it's almost impossible to go backwards.
 

GCX

Member
Yeah but America is supposed to be beaten on these things. Doesn't explain why Finland was late.
Well if we start splitting hairs (and why wouldn't we!), Finland technically passed the law before the US but put it into action later because of the legislative process.

Doesn't really matter in any way though, the important thing is that both countries have it now. :)
 
Congratulations Finland! I was kind of surprised thought when I read this, guess I assumed it was already legal there.

Really interesting to look at the world map in OP and at Europe in particular - how gay rights really get worse from West to East.
Germany, get your shit together.
 

Tacitus_

Member
Yeah but America is supposed to be beaten on these things. Doesn't explain why Finland was late.

From the OP:
"Legal recognition for same-sex couples in Finland has been available since 2002 in the form of registered partnerships, which provide the same rights and responsibilities as marriage for opposite-sex couples, except e.g. adoption rights."

So it's not like we're going from 0 to 100.
 
What's the issue with marriage that a civil union doesn't have?

Well, I hate the idea of having a "traditional" marriage with all those cultural expectations attached to it. If I were to decide to do something informal with very few guests, I'd piss off 90% off my family. If I were to say that I'm just... erm... civilly uniting myself with my GF I would be off the hook.
 

Syder

Member
Progress, even if it's not as fast as we'd like, is a good thing. Well done, Finland. I hope we have it in all of the UK one day.
 

RedHill

Banned
SCOTUS can strike down the previous ruling easily.

Legislative actions are much harder to undo than judicial actions.

IMO Finland chose the better route to providing marriage equality to its citizens.
No, it isn't "easy." There'd need to be a new case that presents new information that was previously unknown. They're not pulling that out of their ass.
 
Wow took so long for it happen. It's actually mind boggling that it's still not legal in a lot of countries. It's fucked up that people would be against something that is quite frankly none of their business and literally has no effect on their own lives.
 

RocknRola

Member
World_marriage-equality_laws.svg


The World Map is now a little bit less grey, but still not quite enough.
 

beril

Member
World_marriage-equality_laws.svg


The World Map is now a little bit less grey, but still not quite enough.

Technically the same amount of grey since Finland had civil unions before and thus would have just been a lighter blue. But good nonetheless. Congrats Finland!
 

KRod-57

Banned
SCOTUS can strike down the previous ruling easily.

Legislative actions are much harder to undo than judicial actions.

IMO Finland chose the better route to providing marriage equality to its citizens.

I must disagree, in the US all that is needed to overturn the legislative is a mere majority, but to overrule a supreme court ruling you need to either assign new members of the court to overturn the decision, or establish a 2/3rds majority in both houses, and 3/4ths approval from the overall states.

To have the right protected under the constitution holds higher authority than a mere piece of legislation. Heck, if overturning a supreme court decision were easier, then we would have overturned a woman's right to choose several times by now
 
to overrule a supreme court ruling you need to either assign new members of the court to overturn the decision

And that's what Trump has just done!


Anyway, Finland still has a rather nasty transgender law - you must get sterilized to be allowed to change your legally recognized gender. But changing that law is not easy either, because we also have a gender based conscription law, so changing legal gender would make it extremely easy to escape conscription. Male-only conscription is in the constitution, which requires either 84% of the parliament to agree to change, OR at least 66% of the parliament twice with an election between the two votes.

Yeah, progress is still quite far away.
 

GCX

Member
And that's what Trump has just done!


Anyway, Finland still has a rather nasty transgender law - you must get sterilized to be allowed to change your legally recognized gender. But changing that law is not easy either, because we also have a gender based conscription law, so changing legal gender would make it extremely easy to escape conscription. Male-only conscription is in the constitution, which requires either 84% of the parliament to agree to change, OR at least 66% of the parliament twice with an election between the two votes.

Yeah, progress is still quite far away.
Yep, the transgender law is definitely the next thing that will rise up now that the marriage stuff is finally settled.
 

RocknRola

Member
I really hope Schulz takes over later this year so we get to be dark blue too.

I was actually surprised that France was the only central (well, central-western I suppose) European country to be on board. Would have though at least the Germany-Austria-Italy trio would already be on top of that.
 

Parsnip

Member
Good.

The registered partnership situation wasn't terrible (as in, could have been worse), but this is better obviously.
 

myco666

Member
And that's what Trump has just done!


Anyway, Finland still has a rather nasty transgender law - you must get sterilized to be allowed to change your legally recognized gender. But changing that law is not easy either, because we also have a gender based conscription law, so changing legal gender would make it extremely easy to escape conscription. Male-only conscription is in the constitution, which requires either 84% of the parliament to agree to change, OR at least 66% of the parliament twice with an election between the two votes.

Yeah, progress is still quite far away.

Wow. Didn't know about this. What is the reasoning for this?
 

SamVimes

Member
I was actually surprised that France was the only central (well, central-western I suppose) European country to be on board. Would have though at least the Germany-Austria-Italy trio would already be on top of that.

Italy can't even pass a decent civil union law, nevermind gay marriage.
 
Kind of funny how in America it just came down to "it's unconstitutional", and that was tge end of it with no further concern over implementation. I can't imagine what took 2 years to plan.
 

Faynwulf

Member
I was actually surprised that France was the only central (well, central-western I suppose) European country to be on board. Would have though at least the Germany-Austria-Italy trio would already be on top of that.

At least in germany that is probably the fault of having a conservative party/chancellor in power for around 10 years. Merkel has said on multiple times that a "true" marriage should only happen between a man and a woman. Which is obviously bullshit to begin with.
 
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