To our Finnish posters: Will gay marriage automatically become legal on Åland when it does in the rest of Finland or do their parliament have to approve it separately?
It will become legal on Åland automatically with the rest of Finland.
The autonomy law of Åland keeps marriage and all family matters as a state issue (5 kap 27 §), with the exception of some inheritance matters. The parliament of Åland will just make sure that none of their property and inheritance laws are affected, before the equal marriage is in force. As Gustaf correctly assumed, Åland is more liberal than Finland in general, they certainly have no problem with applying this law.
Well, most of them. The Faroe Islands are still holding out. So you guys weren't the last.
That's interesting, it means that the Faroe Islands are both more conservative than Denmark, and have full autonomy in marriage and family matters too, am I correct?
Though, the thing is that while gay marriage now passed the Finnish parliament, it will actually become legal only after the other laws it affects are changed also. This will happen only after the April 2015 elections and will have to be done by the new government elected then. If they work fast, we will have our first gay weddings in 2016, but in case of the new govt purposefully slowing down the process, it may take as far as until 1st of March 2017, before gay marriage is actually in force in Finland
So... if the Faroe Islands now decide to do it too and work fast, they might still beat us.