Does registered partners apply to gays?

[Olli_Järvinen]

Hey, I'm dating a Finn and i'm an American and I want to move to Finland to be with my partner. For moving to Finland to be with family you can move to be with a registered partner. Can gays become registered partners? And where would we go to become registered partners? Thanks

http://www.migri.fi/moving_to_finland_t ... ily_member

[Rip]

Register partnership is specifically for same sex partners, so in practice for gays and lesbians. Regarding immigration law it is equal to being married.

[Olli_Järvinen]

Register partnership is specifically for same sex partners, so in practice for gays and lesbians. Regarding immigration law it is equal to being married.

Amazing. Thank you.

[Adrian42]

Hey, I'm dating a Finn and i'm an American and I want to move to Finland to be with my partner. For moving to Finland to be with family you can move to be with a registered partner. Can gays become registered partners?

Registered partnership is the Finnish term for what is called "gay marriage" in the US.

[Pursuivant]

Can gays become registered partners?

Thats the whole idea of the thing.

[Olli_Järvinen]

Can gays become registered partners?

Thats the whole idea of the thing.

Well I wasn't sure! X3

[AldenG]

Registered partnership is the Finnish term for what is called "gay marriage" in the US.

Our states distinguish between "gay marriage" and "civil union." We're only now at the beginning of a transition from civil unions (still unavailable in most states) to marriage. Not really "gay" marriage (which is a civil union or domestic partnership) but just plain marriage that doesn't distinguish or discriminate.

So when US activists advocate "gay marriage," a descriptive rather than legal term, they mean real marriage for all adults instead of separate civil unions or domestic partnerships or registered partnerships.

[Jukka Aho]

Registered partnership is the Finnish term for what is called "gay marriage" in the US.

Our states distinguish between "gay marriage" and "civil union."

A similar distinction exists in Finland, of course, except that same-sex marriage is not (yet) a legally recognized option here. The current form of rekisteröity parisuhde, or “registered partnership”, is the local equivalent of “civil union”, not “marriage”. “Marriage” proper is currently only available to heterosexual couples.

This has lately been a major hot topic here due to a popular and much publicized “citizens’ (legislative) initiative” proposing the legalization of same-sex marriage — or Finnish citizens getting an “egalitarian (non-discriminative) marriage law” (tasa-arvoinen avioliittolaki), as the local term for it goes.

Given that all other Nordic countries already allow gender-neutral marriage, Finland will probably follow the pack — it’s just a question of time. (Finland usually tends to linger on the conservative side in these kind of issues until enough time has passed... and then we’ll just adopt whatever way it is done in Sweden. Or that at least seems to be a fairly typical way of how Finnish politicians deal with these things.)

This is also seen as one of the first true acid tests of the new “citizens’ initiative” direct democracy procedure. (See the above link for more information.) The proposal for same-sex marriage is the second such initiative ever to break the required barrier of 50,000 signatures, and so will also be one of the first to be processed and discussed in the Parliament. (The current tally is 146,000 signatures. The initiators are aiming to get a total of 250,000 before September which is when the allotted time for collecting them will run up.)

The first initiative to pass the barrier was a proposal for banning fur farming for ethical reasons. It has not yet been processed by the Parliament as the MPs are still trying to figure out a suitable formal procedure.

It remains to be seen how much weight the MPs and the Government will actually give to these initiatives. Some Finnish politicians have voiced strong opinions downplaying their significance — seeing them as a threat to the traditional representative democracy and problematic in the sense they may run against the Government platform or just be plain impossible to implement due to practical concerns that ordinary citizens submitting these initiatives may not have properly thought through. Then again, many others see them simply as a new, more direct pathway for people to raise and possibly fast-track issues that should be taken quite seriously and receive a thorough consideration from the Parliament.

[tuulen]

A similar distinction exists in Finland, of course, except that same-sex marriage is not (yet) a legally recognized option here. The current form of rekisteröity parisuhde, or “registered partnership”, is the local equivalent of “civil union”, not “marriage”. “Marriage” proper is currently only available to heterosexual couples.

This has lately been a major hot topic here due to a popular and much publicized “citizens’ (legislative) initiative” proposing the legalization of same-sex marriage — or Finnish citizens getting an “egalitarian (non-discriminative) marriage law” (tasa-arvoinen avioliittolaki), as the local term for it goes.

For ten years I once lived in a major city where a small minority of the neighborhood were gay, maybe 3% of the population, maybe 5% or something like that. The gays' primary concern was about marriage, not for religious reasons but for a variety of legal reasons. And of the years that I lived there the gays never bothered anybody and never appeared in the news as having caused any sort of trouble in the neighborhood, so in that sense they were my good neighbors and I am now willing to support their pursuit of marriage rights.

Yet apparently religion has assumed ownership of the term marriage, but could be willing to accept the term "civil union" or something like that. But for gays to get the legal rights that they want, the term civil union could then become legally indistinguishable from the term marriage.

[browndude]

Yes, and you will have the same rights (and responsibilities ) as a hetero couple.