Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavio (PS) hosted a press conference in Helsinki on 11 July 2024. Tavio on Saturday voiced his disapproval with what he described as “woke” elements of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics. (Mikko Stig – Lehtikuva)
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MINISTER for Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavio (PS) has censured the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“Sports should be kept outside politics. Left-wing activists make use of all propaganda and normalise their wokeness,” he wrote in a social media post accompanied by an image where the letter ‘o’ in ‘woke’ has been replaced with the Olympic rings.
“The opening ceremony was a kind of show by Pride liberals,” he elaborated by phone to Helsingin Sanomat on Saturday.
He argued to the newspaper that there was no need to call so much attention to minorities in the opening ceremony, drawing attention especially to a scene where drag dancers and performers gathered around Dionysus, the Olympian god of wine. The scene, he viewed, made mockery of Christianity by alluding to The Last Supper.
“The opening ceremony was programming for the whole family. That’s why you could’ve tastefully left out the drag queens if you wanted to keep the show politically neutral,” he said.
The minister estimated that it has become more common to have no tolerance for supporters of traditional family values than to have no tolerance for the kind of “sexual freak show” that was the opening ceremony.
“Nowadays people argue that everything that isn’t woke is claimed to be conservatism,” he stated to Helsingin Sanomat. “It’s going a bit too far is minorities can’t be represented without drag queens. The Olympics aren’t just for minorities, but they’re for everyone. Everyone can do sports regardless of their sexual orientation.”
Tavio reiterated that there should be no close connection between the opening ceremonies of sporting events and drawing attention to the broad range of sexual minorities. The best way to promote equality, he added, “is to be tolerant of our differences in practice”.
The term ‘drag queen’ is not indicative of sexual orientation but refers to a person who uses often exaggerated feminine clothing and make-up for entertainment.
Tavio added that he intends to watch the games and root for Finnish athletes despite the opening ceremony.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
