thre's bad and there's this
This is probably not all that relevant to anyone who doesn't live in Finland, but I just have to write about it because there aren't words to describe how angry this is making me. 
unikorento was the one who actually brought this to my attention yesterday (and it made me cry and very nearly throw up because I just... no words), because I don't follow the media or have facebook account or pretty much follow anything that would have had me hear about this. Also since I live further north than
unikorento it's not something that you see out on the streets here or something (don't really know how it is other places either, but I assume it's more noticeable. I might be completely wrong about that).
So the thing is this campaign called Älä Alistu! (Don't Surrender/Yield) organised by different Christian groups that's targetted at teenagers and the basic message of the campaign is that young people should not surrender to the pressure of society and the media and fall into homosexuality. And how you can be cured from homosexuality and bisexuality by the help of your christian fate. (And those are really not my words, just typing that is making me feel sick.)
There's a video which I have not seen and will not ever see, where a formerly bi-girl tells us about how her faith cured her. At one point she says this: "Jos murhaajat voivat parantua, niin miksi ei myös homot." In English that would be something like: "If murderers can be cured, why not gays?"
There's also a facebook group for the campaign, obviously since it's targeted at young people. It did not take very long for a facebook group protesting this campaign to be made. And facebook shortly decided to remove said protest pages (along with the personal facebook account of the founder of the group) for use of offensive material, naturally the pages for the campaign itself are still there. My love for facebook is certainly not growing. And I just found that as of today the protest group seems to have been reinstated, but not the founder's personal account.
I should probably mention that the Evangelic Lutheran Church (membership around 78% of the Finnish population) is not a part of the campaign. Though I believe some organisations that are officially affiliated with the Church are. In fact the Archbishop has publicly expressed his displeasure with the campaign and assured us that the Church has no part in it. Since this all happened the rate of people resigning from Church has risen more than considerably, even though it is not the Church who is responsible for this. The web page eroakirkosta.fi, through which you can quite easily resign from church, usually has about 50 resignations a day at this time of year. When the campaign aired that number rose to 500.
That's the whole issue. I don't quite know what I should say, because I'm just a bit too upset. The horror of it is beyond words. Teenagers struggling with their sexuality have it hard enough without this. This whole thing is just sick. We don't really talk about it, but we all know Finland has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. And the suicide risk for young people who identify with sexual- and gender minorites is higher than for, well those who don't. So yeah, lets make the homophobia worse and make sure even less teenagers ever live to be anything else than teenagers.
ETA:
unikorento pointed me at this petition (in Finnish obviously) to stop the campaign and I'll just put the link here:
http://www.adressit.com/vaadin_ala_alistu_-kampanjan_lopettamista
unikorento was the one who actually brought this to my attention yesterday (and it made me cry and very nearly throw up because I just... no words), because I don't follow the media or have facebook account or pretty much follow anything that would have had me hear about this. Also since I live further north than
unikorento it's not something that you see out on the streets here or something (don't really know how it is other places either, but I assume it's more noticeable. I might be completely wrong about that).
So the thing is this campaign called Älä Alistu! (Don't Surrender/Yield) organised by different Christian groups that's targetted at teenagers and the basic message of the campaign is that young people should not surrender to the pressure of society and the media and fall into homosexuality. And how you can be cured from homosexuality and bisexuality by the help of your christian fate. (And those are really not my words, just typing that is making me feel sick.)
There's a video which I have not seen and will not ever see, where a formerly bi-girl tells us about how her faith cured her. At one point she says this: "Jos murhaajat voivat parantua, niin miksi ei myös homot." In English that would be something like: "If murderers can be cured, why not gays?"
There's also a facebook group for the campaign, obviously since it's targeted at young people. It did not take very long for a facebook group protesting this campaign to be made. And facebook shortly decided to remove said protest pages (along with the personal facebook account of the founder of the group) for use of offensive material, naturally the pages for the campaign itself are still there. My love for facebook is certainly not growing. And I just found that as of today the protest group seems to have been reinstated, but not the founder's personal account.
I should probably mention that the Evangelic Lutheran Church (membership around 78% of the Finnish population) is not a part of the campaign. Though I believe some organisations that are officially affiliated with the Church are. In fact the Archbishop has publicly expressed his displeasure with the campaign and assured us that the Church has no part in it. Since this all happened the rate of people resigning from Church has risen more than considerably, even though it is not the Church who is responsible for this. The web page eroakirkosta.fi, through which you can quite easily resign from church, usually has about 50 resignations a day at this time of year. When the campaign aired that number rose to 500.
That's the whole issue. I don't quite know what I should say, because I'm just a bit too upset. The horror of it is beyond words. Teenagers struggling with their sexuality have it hard enough without this. This whole thing is just sick. We don't really talk about it, but we all know Finland has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. And the suicide risk for young people who identify with sexual- and gender minorites is higher than for, well those who don't. So yeah, lets make the homophobia worse and make sure even less teenagers ever live to be anything else than teenagers.
ETA:
unikorento pointed me at this petition (in Finnish obviously) to stop the campaign and I'll just put the link here:
http://www.adressit.com/vaadin_ala_alistu_-kampanjan_lopettamista