Mannerheim died on January 28, 1951 in Lausanne, Switzerland while recuperating from an operation on a perforated ulcer and was buried in Helsinki on February 4 in a state funeral with full military honors.

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Pekka Haavisto (b. 1958) is a Finnish politician representing the Green League. He was re-elected to the Finnish Parliament in the election of March 2007 after an absence of 12 years. Haavisto lives in a registered partnership with Antonio Flores, originally from Ecuador.

Oras Tynkkynen (b. 1977), one of the first openly gay parliamentarians in Finland, is a Member of the Parliament of Finland, also representing the Green League. His writings often concentrate on environmental issues, especially climate change.

Finland's GLBTQ Organizations and Pride Events

SETA (Seksuaalinen Tasavertaisuus, which stands for "Sexual Equality") is the national Finnish human rights organization in the field of legal equality and social justice for sexual and gender minorities, including lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people. SETA gathers and provides information on sexual and gender diversity, and provides consultative and support services for gender and sexual minorities not available elsewhere. It was founded in 1974 in Helsinki and has since become a central organization with member associations across Finland.

SETA also publishes Z Magazine, the largest glbtq publication in Finland, with a circulation of about 4,000.

Helsinki Pride Week, which is held annually in late June, is Finland's largest glbtq pride event. Helsinki Pride is a major summer event attracting thousands of visitors with exhibitions, workshops, discussion groups, parades, and many other activities and events for the glbtq community. Over 10,000 people took part in the week-long events in 2007, with more than 3,000 people participating in the pride parade.

Vinokino, Finland's Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, is held each year in September, with screenings in four cities: Helsinki, Oulu, Tampere, and Turku. The festival began in 1991 and has become one of the major highlights for the queer community in Finland. The festival aims to promote gay visibility in Finland and bring minority representation to the forefront of public consciousness. In addition to screenings of gay and lesbian-themed films, shorts, and documentaries, there are also a number of supporting events and guest speakers.

Anti-discrimination statutes and ordinances have made a real difference in the lives of millions of glbtq individuals.

Denmark has a reputation for sexual liberation, tolerance, and progressive social policy in regards to glbtq issues.

Since the 1960s, Finnish authors and critics have written openly about both gay male and lesbian sexuality in both Finnish and Swedish.

Helsinki, Finland's capital and largest city, is the hub of Finnish gay and lesbian life and the center of the country's glbtq political rights movement.

In recent decades, gay men and lesbians in Iceland have made significant legal advances, but life continues to be difficult for glbtq people outside the capital.

Like most Scandinavian countries, Norway respects glbtq rights, and Norwegians are broadly tolerant of homosexuals.

A cultural crossroads between Asia and Europe, Russia has a long, rich, and often violent heritage of varied influences and stark confrontations in regard to its patterns of same-sex love.

Lesbian and gay couples have been fighting for the freedom to marry since the dawn of the modern glbtq struggle for equality; despite some success abroad, progress toward same-sex marriage in the United States has been slow.

A liberal and democratic kingdom, Sweden has a reputation for sexual openness, yet it maintains a law that punishes buyers of sex from prostitutes.

Switzerland is a very cosmopolitan nation with a vibrant glbtq community, but it has lagged behind much of Europe, particularly the Nordic countries, when it comes to assuring equal rights.

Best known for her series of children's books about the Moomin family of trolls, Tove Jansson, considered a national treasure in Finland, also wrote fiction for adults and was an accomplished artist and illustrator.

Defiantly rejecting the invisibility, homophobia, and indignities of pre-Stonewall life, the men in Tom of Finland's drawings reflect a hyper-masculine, working-class version of homosexual manhood that proved important to the emerging gay rights movement.