Miksi PAavo Lipponen ja Tarja Halonen ovat niin hiljaa menneisyydestään?
Paavo Lipponen sai vuonna 1969 tuomion totaalikieltäytymiseen yllyttämisestä.
Tarja Halosen 1970-luvun tulipunainen menneisyys pitäisi tuoda kaiken kansan tietoisuuteen.
Milloin ne stasi-listat avataan lopullisesti?
Paavo Lipponen sai vuonna 1969 tuomion totaalikieltäytymiseen yllyttämisestä.
Tarja Halosen 1970-luvun tulipunainen menneisyys pitäisi tuoda kaiken kansan tietoisuuteen.
Milloin ne stasi-listat avataan lopullisesti?
Vastaukset 3
Vanhimmat
arja Halonen and gay rights
On February 6, 2000, Tarja Halonen, minister of foreign affairs, was elected as the new President of Finland. She assumed her office on March 1, 2000.
Halonen is unique among all heads of state in that she has been the chairwoman of a national LGBT organisation, SETA (Finnish National organization for Sexual Equality). Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about that.
Does that mean she is lesbian, or bi?
No. She has said that she is not, and she means that too.
Then why did she become the SETA chairwoman?
SETA was founded in 1973, but its roots are in the 1960s when a great many young intellectuals and politicians like Tarja Halonen were members in various organisations that had radical sexual political agenda. Initially, SETA wanted to include people with all orientations - the main thing was that you wanted to work to change attitudes, to change laws, etc.
After a while, there was of course a lot of pressure to make SETA more 'gay oriented' i.e. its role as a provider of community services started to grow. But in the 1980 it was still quite natural to prefer to select a chairwoman who was very supportive of SETAs goals, and who wanted to give them more visibility in the parliament and in the media. We had other chairs like that in the early 1980s, Tarja Halonen was not the only one.
Halonen did, of course not, become the SETA chairwoman completely out of the blue. She had already spoken out for gay rights, e.g. she had attended SETAs 5th anniversary celebrations in spring 1979 as the main speaker.
What exactly was she doing when she was the SETA chairwoman?
She attended board meetings and participated in planning how to achieve legal changes. Back then, Finland still had a law prohibiting 'encouragement to lewd acts between persons of the same sex'. Halonen, a MP since 1979, made in 1981 a proposal in the parliament, together with a group of other MPs, to repeal that prohibition and to start the work towards gay-inclusive anti-discrimination legislature.
During Halonen's time in SETA, a group of activists arranged a spontaneous action during the 1981 gay lib days to challenge existing penal law, shouting "We encourage to homosexuality" and collecting a list of signatures which was given to the police. The attached photo shows Halonen giving legal advice to the protesters.
Did all of the Finnish LGBT community support her?
When Halonen served as minister of Justice in 1990-91, there were some high hopes that she would strongly defend gay rights in such an influential position. Quite some people felt disappointed because Halonen chose a low profile. This was mainly because she tends to set realistic goals and works to achieve those, instead of seeking open confrontation.
The current Finnish penal code forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation since 1995, and even the law prohibiting 'encouragement to homosexuality' has been repealed rather uneventfully. New legal challenges have replaced the old ones, and the LGBT community now remembers Halonen's successful work as foreign minister 1995-2000.
During her presidential campaign and after the election, she did not hide her pro-gay merits at all, which gained her much respect from the LGBT community.
So how did LGBT people react when she was elected?
There was quite a big emotional reaction, a sense of affirmation and hope. 51.6% of voters had supported a candidate who was known to have been the SETA chairwoman once upon a time. Yes, Finns do know what SETA stands for, and they knew what kind of person they voted for. Thus no wonder that many people said things like "This restores my faith in humanity."
Official pages of President Tarja Halonen
Compiled by Eva Isaksson
Bi President?
From:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/po/20000208/co/20000208002.html
Finns Pick Past Gay Leader Pres.
SUMMARY: Finland elects its 1st woman president, the former president of a national gay & lesbian organization (who may now marry her long-time male partner).
A president of the Finnish national gay and lesbian group SETA in the 1980’s, Tarja Halonen, is now the President of all of Finland after a runoff election against a more conservative opponent on February 6. The divorced mother of a now-grown daughter, Halonen lives with her long-time male partner Pentti Arajarvi; rumors are rife that they may legally marry in the near future as they move into the presidential palace. Social Democrat Halonen has been serving as Finland’s first woman foreign minister since 1995 and now becomes its first woman President, thanks largely to women’s votes. She thinks it’s fitting she’ll be President on the 100th anniversary of Finnish women’s suffrage in 2005, an achievement fellow Social Democrat Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen called "an historic moment for Finland." She topped former Center Party Prime Minister Esko Aho by more than 100,000 votes, 51.6% - 48.4%, with voter turnout exceeding 75%. The foreign press downplayed the election itself as being more about personalities than issues—there wasn’t much disagreement between the candidates—and downplayed the post of President as largely symbolic since its domestic powers were restricted in a recent constitutional reform. Halonen will be sworn in March 1 for a six-year term.
A radical in the 1960’s whose idol was Che Guevara, Halonen was a trade union attorney who entered politics in 1979. She served on the Helsinki City Council for 20 years and held several ministerial positions before becoming Foreign Minister. Although she’s viewed as having moved more to the center over the years, she has retained her ties with labor, the left, and former communists. She describes herself as a "relative pacifist" and believes Finland should stay out of NATO, although she’s grown more enthusiastic about the European Union over the years. She is also notorious for having quit the church 85% of Finns belong to, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, because it does not ordain women. Lipponen described her as "a person who with her own individuality, her openness and her genuine character appealed across party lines." She’s been praised as caring, down-to-earth, effective, modest, and witty.
Paavo Lipponen sai sakkotuomion ns. aseistakieltäytyjien yllytysoikeudenkäynnissä, jossa syytettyinä hänen lisäkseen oli parituhatta suomalaista kulttuuri-ihmistä. Tietääkseni nämä sakkotuomiot purettiin hovissa. Niiden kohdalla, jotka raastuvanoikeus tuomitsi ehdottomiin vankeusrangaistuksiin, hovi muutti tuomiot sakoiksi, joista presidentti Kekkonen sitten asianomaiset armahti. Kekkosen kerrotaan sanoneen että niin kauan kun hän istuu pallillaan Suomessa ei mielipiteiden esittäjiä heitetä vankilaan. Hänhän myös armahti mmm. kirjailija Hannu Salaman rangaistusseuraamuksesta jumalanpilkkaoikeudenkäynnissä.
Lipposella ja noilla kahdellatuhannella muulla suomalaisella kulttuuri-ihmisellä ei ole mitään syytä vaieta menneisyydestään, päin vastoin. He voisivat kaikki olla ylpeitä siitä, että heidän toimintansa tuloksena väärä laintulkinta oikaistiin. Niin pitääkin kansalaisten aina menetellmä, kun lakia ruvetaan käyttämään vastoin oikeutta.