Finland Times

Former President Tarja Halonen on Wednesday extended her support to the proposed changes in the marriage act recognizing the same sex marriage.

She also encouraged the ongoing citizen initiative for collecting signatures in favor of the equal marriage act.

The encouragement of the former Finnish president came from her opinion posted in Twitter.

The citizens' initiative on Tuesday started campaigning to collect signatures of the people in favour of the same sex marriage and already collected  100,000 signatures so far.

At least 50,000 signatures are needed to introduce debate in Parliament on any issue and the campaigning made the way open for reconsidering the Act by the parliament.

Finalnd have been approved registration of same sex couple since 2002 and they are entitled to use common family name in terms of marriage .

Same sex marriage would allow people  to marry anyone regardless of gender.

The bill was placed  before the parliamentary committee last month but it was rejected in a small margin of votes

The legal affairs committee of the parliament at the end of last month did not place the bill to the House due to lack of majority support and opted to hold discussion and taking public opinion for the bill.

The same sex marriage is recognized in all the Nordic countries excepting Finland.