Well, it
is still better than America
I will however say that the court system is bad. Literally medieval. Or well, medieval left-overs.
You know, how many old countries have a lot of these left-over laws from previous eras? Most of them irrelevant, but some are good (like the All Man's Right laws), and then, there are some things that are bad. And worse. This is worse.
You see, once upon a time in Sweden, a medieval time, the courts belonged to the Crown, and the judges followed his command. And people felt they were getting kind of screwed over by this. So, since Sweden has were always a lot freer than the rest of Europe during this time period, they mandated a system where every [arbitrary regional definition] would provide two fellow men, called "Named(as in chosen or appointed)-men", untrained in legal matters, to sit by the courts and provide the common folks' perspective in the trials. This is all good. In fact, this is pretty great, seen from the standards set by the rest of Feudal Europe I mean.
But then. Times changed. Revolutions came and went, the old regimes were brought down and over time, a new system put in place striving towards something called "a state of rights". The courts and judges were now to serve the written law over any authority. Still pretty good, and the "named-men" remained. And there were more changes, and then suddenly people chose not only these "named-men", but also their political leaders.
This is where the Swedish court system went bad. Somebody, somewhere, sometime, had the great idea, most likely thinking himself a damn smart and efficient fellow, that the election of "named-men" and political leaders (on the localiest, municipality/commune, level). And really, people were already trusting these politicians to rule in their stead, so why not skip the whole election of "named-men" entirely? The people's chosen representatives could obviously choose the "named-men" on their own. And BAM! The named-men become people chosen for their political views (in fact, afair, you have to belong to one of the political parties sitting in the municipality board to be able to become a "named-man"). There is still no legal training or experience needed (for the same reasons as originally), basically becoming our version of a (not as powerful) jury. Except it is incredibly, unbelievably stupid and bad. At least, the actual judge still the boss and makes the decisions (I am not certain exactly to what extent, but I believe that in practice they make all the the decisions), but yeah. Still sucks. Still completely un-timely for a modern country.
This has gone on for some time. Most of it, I guess, more or less decently minded people got named, so it still worked out more or less without outcries (even though the judges has always grumbled loudly about it), but then, some decade or so ago, the neo-nazi party "the Sweden Democrats" started getting elected into the municipality boards. And then, people finally had enough, judges especially, and now there is at least a movement towards change in these matters, and the government has some sort of "research"/review/investigation planned (you know how those things works), so at long last, things may be looking up for the Swedish courts. I am am very much looking forward to seeing how it will end, hopefully it won't be a worse system. Oh, and god damned those fucking bastards if the government enquiry "ends up" coming to the conclusion that it isn't in need of an overhaul.
Sweden? Trans friendly? Yeah not really.
That article's a bit outdated, I believe they've decided to change the law, but only recently.
I don't remember exactly, but yeah, maybe. All of the parties in the Riksdag was for changing it except the neo-nazis and the Christian Democrats, but the latter part of the right-wing coalition government (the "Alliance", as they style themselves
), and they let CD have their will against their own beliefs, so they apparently didn't care about destroying transexuals' lives *that* much.
However, and this is what I can't remember clearly, some time after this vote against changing the law, the Christian Democrats had a bit of a internal struggle between their more liberal and conservative factions, as the liberalers where in charge and the conservativers didn't think the party was conservative enough. The sitting liberaller leader won a quite decisive victory in the end though, and he then proceeded to give the other faction some quick ideological fuck-yous, and I believe changing the party line on this issue was one of them. The problem, of course and unfortunately, is that the issue might not be up for vote again in a long time, so it's hard to say when the law will be changed.
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Topic: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread (Read 1245344 times)