MILK it baby!

Last week was a bit of a movie week for Gay Cafe. On Tuesday at our usual meeting time we watched the movie "Milk" about Harvey Milk and his work for LGBT rights and on Saturday we went to the movies and saw "Gravity". I've seen Milk once before and I remember feeling so empowered back then. That hasn't changed since then, I felt the message, and I felt the calling. It's especially moving and timely right now, as next week SETA has its annual meeting where half of the board is being elected and I'm one of the candidates for the open positions. I've been thinking about this since last spring and have talked about it with friends and gotten so much encouragement and it's something I feel like I should do. I need to do this. And as much as I want to affect change and be part of something bigger, I'm also terrified. But nothing worth having/getting is ever easy and it's time I step out of my comfort zone. Again.

One of the things I'd like to influence is activating the LGBT community. Whether it's participating in peer support groups, getting involved in their local SETA's, organizing parties or creating their own peer support groups, I want the community engaged. Engaged in the fight for all of our rights, engaged in creating communities around Finland, engaged in intelligent discussions and engaged in changing the attitudes towards us, especially in small towns.

The further away you go from Helsinki, and the smaller the towns get, the longer the distances become and the further away are the local SETA's where you can get the support and friendships you need. If we can get the LGBT people from those small towns to come out to their families, friends, co-workers and local politicians, maybe we can influence a change in their attitudes. It's going to be more difficult to deny people their rights when it's someone you know and love whose rights you are denying.

If I'm elected to be a board member at SETA, I'd like to work in getting people to become members of their local SETA, or even establish one n their home community. It might not be ideal or possible in some smaller communities, but unless we get more members and branch out all over Finland, it never will be possible.

I've thought about establishing a local SETA here, but right now, as things stand, we are far few people to do so. And Forssa and the surrounding area might be a just a little too small of an area for having one of our own. Maybe in the future when I can get more people to actively participate, then maybe. One viable option is to have one for Kanta-Häme. The population would be big enough, but the problem right now is that I don't know anyone from Hämeenlinna. I'f I'm elected to the board I hope to meet more of the local people who might be interested in local SETA. Forssa as an area isn't really attractive for people to move into, as people are losing jobs and factories are closing and after high school people tend to move into bigger cities, and if they are LGBT and get into the local SETA activities, getting them to move back to this small town is very difficult.

So, there's a lot of work to be done and I hope to be part of it, as a SETA board member or just a Gay Cafe leader/Forssa Pride organizer.

Pride stinks or how does the saying go?

And when I say Pride, I don't mean Forssa Pride, but my super-sized head that's about to burst from happiness from all this praise! Leena is writing a blog to city.fi about her year as a Miss Gay Finland and she just posted about Forssa Pride! And she might have, maybe, sort of, kind of mentioned me by name, so yeah…

I'm not saying that you should read the post, but you should probably read her post. If you can read Finnish, that is.

Forssa should hire Rakel and Leena as spokespeople for the city, since they have done more for Forssa's reputation than any ad firms have done with ad campaigns.

Have a super gay weekend, I'm going to go sweat this pride in the sauna!