The Christian Democrats delay rights for LGBT people. LGBT community unsurprised.

[marshtide]

Source: RFSL pressmeddelande - KD fördröjer viktiga förbättringar för hbt-personer

So there's been work going on to change some of the more shockingly terrible aspects of Sweden's laws re: trans people - namely the whole "divorce and sterilisation mandatory" thing, omg Sweden, aren't we over this whole forced sterilisation thing yet, for serious - and also to make it possible for single women to get help with becoming pregnant in Swedish hospitals. Basically almost all the parties are for this; it is seen as a Good Thing. Well, YEAH.

RFSL say:

När RFSL under valrörelsen förra året genomförde en enkätundersökning bland riksdagskandidaterna svarade 87,5 procent att de var för en förändring av lagen om fastställelse av könstillhörighet i vissa fall på så sätt att kraven på att vara ogift, steril, myndig och svensk medborgare skulle tas bort. Alla partier utom två, Kristdemokraterna och Sverigedemokraterna, har på olika sätt deklarerat att de är för en förändring.

Translation:

When RFSL under the election campaign last year carried out a survey of the parliamentary candidates, 87.5 percent replied that they supported a change in the law regarding confirmation of gender assignment in certain cases in such a way that the requirement to be unmarried, sterile, legally independent and a swedish citizen would be removed. All parties except for two, the Christian Democrats (Kristdemokraterna) and Swedish Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna), have in one way or another declated that they are in favour of a change.

(Sverigedemokraterna, for the record, are the anti-immigration party. They are also in favour women being, like, Real Women, which means at home.)

So I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Those two parties are tiny. They're both hovering around the line which you have to cross to actually qualify to be in parliament at all. The big parties? They're for change, even the Moderate party, which isn't exactly renowned for its progressive thinking (and got terrible marks on the aforementioned survey otherwise - think I posted about that one at the time actually). The department of health and welfare (socialstyrelsen) has also published recommendations to the effect of CHANGE THIS NOW. So it really should be getting changed.

But.

BUT.

There is a problem. Of course there is a problem!

In this case, the problem is called Göran Hägglund. He's the leader of the Christian Democrats.

And as the Christian Democrats are part of the governing coallition, he's also the minister for social affairs.

Guess which department has control over these questions. Go on! Guess! You will be so surprised.

Or, I guess, not.

Yeah, so Göran Hägglund, Minister for Social Affairs, head of a party with four percent of the nation's vote, is effectively blocking the opportunity to give trans people basic human rights and to give women not accompanied by a man the right to get fertilisation help from Swedish hospitals (ALTHOUGH his party got elected to parliament, as the article points out, using a slogan to the effect of "let the family decide more". Hur hur.). He is doing it via the political equivalent of sitting in a corner and going LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU. WHAT PROBLEM.

Let's have a big round of applause for the Christian Democrats!

"For a more humane Sweden" is another othe of the slogans they used last year, by the way.


(I leave you to guess how on earth I could possibly have got into an argument with some of their representatives on the street last year in the run-up to the election...)

Comments

[nanila]

Good grief. Whose idea was it to make him minister for social affairs? Was that the place where someone thought he might do the least amount of damage? Because Minister for Underwater Basket Weaving would have been a better choice.

[marshtide]

Well, like I say, the moderate party isn't renowned for progressive thinking, so they probably don't have a problem with his bullshit a lot of the time... urgh.

Yeah, that would definitely have been a better post.

Dagens löpsedel: KD - fortfarande fördomsfulla as!

[dancing_moon]

Basically, they KD tend to be the ones who talk the most about "soft values" in the right-block: Take care of the elderly, do things for the (heteronormative) nuclear family, think of the children etc. So they probably wanted it and the other parties are more interested in economy and the job situation. The problem being of course that right-wing Christian conservatives are the last people anyone who is not a right-wing Christian conservative wants to have in control of the social affairs

[foxfinial]

I have nothing to say except D= D= D= D=

[marshtide]

Yeah, pretty much. People tend to talk about Sverigedemokraterna as the great evil of Swedish politics, but they are, frankly, far from the greatest problem this country has. For one thing, they're not sitting in the actual governing coalition. Unlike some. (And to be honest, I find the christian democrats very, very nearly as creepy.)

[eggcrack]

"For a more humane Sweden" MY ASS.

They're trying to make a government in Finland now and Christian Democrats will apparently be part of it. I can only wonder how much fun that's going to be. D:

[marshtide]

Ooooh boy. Yeah, Finnish politics seems even more joyful than usual right now. And by joyful I mean catastrophic... ;;

[antisoppist]

Don't they usually try and shunt them off into alcohol policy or overseas aid? Not that that's ideal either. I note that the English version of the Finnish Christian Democrats website translates the slogan "Koti, uskonto, isänmaa" as "Home, religion and home country". Presumably "fatherland" had an unfortunate ring to it...

[eggcrack]

I guess so, but the way things are now anything could happen. I just hope it's not the worst case scenario that does.

'Home country' looks awfully awkward, at least to me. But yeah, not using 'fatherland' implies that somebody among them knows what they're doing.

[pulchritude]

How did they even get into the governing coalition, since they are such a tiny party? D:

[marshtide]

Well, there are only two big parties - moderates and social democrats - so any coalition will be one of them plus whatever other small parties they can coax over. Basically, the parties that aren't in there are the ones who have expressed that they have no wish to work with the Moderates (Green, Left, Social democrats) and the one that no-one wants to talk to (Sverigedemokraterna).

[chairman_wow]

My reaction to this was all sorts of sadfaces. And then I got curious and started researching the situation in Germany.

Sadfaces continue unabated. Pieces of the law that requires divorces and surgeries and sterility etc have been declared unconstitutional, and new laws keep being drafted, but nothing ever quite seems to happen. I'm just going to go ahead and blame Christian Democrats for that in this case, as well.

[marshtide]

Urgh, FAIL, EUROPE. Fail!

[unnique]

Looks like we've the same laws on this side of the border: http://www.ftpn.no/default.asp?id=1360 Meh.