The Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church continued to hemorrhage members over the weekend after Lutheran Archbishop Kari Mäkinen's open support for gay marriage, pushing the total number of resignations this year to over 50,000 so far. According to tabloid daily Iltalehti, the toll for the weekend alone reached nearly 12,000. Parliament voted to legalise same-sex marriage Friday afternoon.
The resignations were facilitated by the grass roots website "Leave the church" (Eroa kirkosta), run by head of the agnostics association Petri Karisma. Karisma said that while most of those who chose to leave the church appeared to be conservatives angered by Mäkinen’s support for gender-neutral marriage, the church has been dealt a double-whammy as liberals also took the opportunity to separate themselves from the flock.
“In spite of Archbishop Kari Mäkinen’s positive comments the church’s official position on same-sex marriage is negative. This has now led to a situation where liberals are also leaving,” Karisma told Iltalehti.
IL reports that on Sunday other church leaders swung into damage control mode, calling for the congregation to pull together. Mikkeli Bishop Seppo Häkkinen and Porvoo Bishop Björn Vikström issued a joint letter to the faithful, pointing out that they too disagreed on the question of gay marriage.
“However we are completely agreed that no one should resign from the church over this matter,” they wrote in their appeal to members.
IS: Did all those people really check out?
Meanwhile the other leading tabloid daily Ilta Sanomat decided to test the validity of the numbers reported on the "Leave the church" website. One staffer tried to resign, first by using a fake identity, however that failed when the service requested a social security number. On the second attempt using a real social security number and a fake name however, the service accepted the resignation.
Website administrator Petri Karisma, noted that the process requires individuals to confirm their intention by returning a written confirmation to their local registry offices. It’s a failsafe that allows for validation of the registrations, but also allows congregation members a chance to reconsider decisions made in the heat of the moment.
Karisma also pointed out that the backend of the web system alerts its developers to attempts to record false resignations.
“You can use whatever name, but the social security number must be authentic. You can’t resign with a fabricated social security number because you can’t use any combination of numbers for a social security number, and it won’t go through the system,” he expanded.
According to Karisma the website’s margin of error is four to six percent. He added that the group behind the site cleans up its data once local registry offices publish their own statistics. That information should come at the end of the year.
The self-declared agnostic noted that during the last peak of resignations the website accurately recorded 9,000 resignations following disparaging statements about gay marriage by Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen in 2010, on Yle's current affairs programme Ajankohtainen kakkonen. The church later said that in 2010 just over 83,000 people resigned membership.
Trialing street mediation for junior offenders
The leading circulation daily Helsingin Sanomat focuses its lens on eastern Helsinki, where mall managers at the popular Itäkeskus shopping centre (now rebranded Itis) has become the first place to trial a new form of mediation to deal with juvenile offenders.
Called street mediation, the process brings together underage offenders and their parents with police officers, mall security, proprietors and an impartial mediator to help resolve minor offences. The process is voluntary and the idea is to allow the young offender and proprietors to come to some agreement on compensation for crimes committed - with minimal interference by parents and law enforcement.
In one case described in the piece a 15-year old female offender is accused of damaging mall property to the tune of 485 euros. After reviewing the report of mall security and presenting her own account of the course of events, the teen agrees to work at the store in question to compensate for the damage caused.
The matter is settled once all parties agree to the terms and conditions of the settlement, and helps prevent the creation of a criminal record at a young age.
HIV/AIDS sufferers still face stigmatisation, discrimination
Coming off the press in Tampere the widely-read daily Aamulehti runs a lead piece in its online paper on HIV in Finland on the occasion of World AIDS Day. The paper interviewed head of the HIV Foundation Jukka Keronen, who said that although people in Finland are relatively well-informed about the disease, there is still a great deal of stigmatisation and discrimination experienced by infected persons.
According to the National Institute for Health and Welfare the THL, Finland has seen 150 to 180 new HIV infections every year for the past few years. Some 2,000 people in major cities like Helsinki, Oulu, Tampere and Turku take advantage of free, anonymous instant HIV tests annually.
This year that number rose when it became possible for men who have intercourse with other men to get the test without a prior appointment. The Foundation said that up to November this year it had identified 158 HIV infections and 4 cases of Aids.
