At the risk of going against 20% of Finns' opinion here, I will post a word on politics. (99.99+% of Finns never read this blog anyway, so who cares.)
One of the hottest issues this fall in political scene, besides the coming presidential election, is the
Christian Democrats bill on Law in regards to fertility treatment. They wish to restrict the right for such treatments to man-woman relationships, leaving out single women and lesbian couples.
The main argument for them in public has lately been the good of the child. They wish not to be helping people to produce more fatherless children. Needless to say, they are facing a vigorous opposition from many interest groups and many times the quality of arguments is not very high. However, the opposition is predictable, especially at the time when the government just signed a law that significantly increased the rights of same-sex-couples. Namely, they are now allowed to officially register the relationship and have many rights that compare to the rights of married couples.
In case of fertility treatments, I think CD will lose their case. I believe so, because it seems that the benefits that man-woman parenting brings to the children are not necessarily viewed as great benefits according to values which a big portion of the current members of the parliament work from. It is argued that a good single mom can bring up healthy and stable children, as well as a lesbian couple can - far better than instable man-woman couple. (for some reason they do not speak of instable lesbian couples or exhausted single moms...)
Personally I share many values of the Finnish CD party. I do think that a stable man-woman couple is an ideal for parenting, and marriage is the right surrounding to make and grow up kids. I also think that homosexuality one of the characteristics of the corrupted humanity. (there are plenty of other characteristics too, like greed and pride that our society lives upon.) And, I do think that as Christian I should be working on helping people to find the will of God to their lives in midst of all this corruption.
However, it is whole another issue, whether the Finnish Law should be formed to meet my values. I do understand that there are other Finns who does not share them with me. And there seems not to be a way for us to unify our values, because my values rise from my understanding of the Bible, which means nothing to many my fellow countrymen. However, we do share a country that is alright to live in, and in order to keep it as such, we should make laws based on agreements and compromises that allow all of us to live according to our personal values.
I do not think that Bible based laws will make this country more righteous. I do not even think that those laws would help them find God personally. (Which to me is a higher goal than conforming them outwardly to appear as such.) Perhaps it is just the opposite. The greatest revivals of the church history took place in the very beginning when - take my word - the societies were more anti-Christian than any of the western countries today.
I do think that peaceful society is something worth achieving, and that only comes when people can compromise in their demands on shared values.
What comes to the fertility treatments, I think that if the majority of the people hold that advantages and disadvantages of single/same-sex parenting are more on positive then the law should grant it to such couples. If asked, I can tell that my personal opinion is different, but so far nobody has asked me.
