Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter One The Road to Registered Partnership
- Chapter Two Is Marriage what we want?
- Chapter Three Gay Marriage in Mainstream Politics
- Chapter Four Implementation
- Chapter Five Gender and Marriage Statistics
- Chapter Six The Next Step
- Summary and Conclusions
- Notes
- Appendix: Political Parties and Gay and Lesbian Rights Groups in Scandinavia
- References
- Index
Chapter Six - The Next Step
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter One The Road to Registered Partnership
- Chapter Two Is Marriage what we want?
- Chapter Three Gay Marriage in Mainstream Politics
- Chapter Four Implementation
- Chapter Five Gender and Marriage Statistics
- Chapter Six The Next Step
- Summary and Conclusions
- Notes
- Appendix: Political Parties and Gay and Lesbian Rights Groups in Scandinavia
- References
- Index
Summary
The idea that the law on registered partnership was just the first step was used by both sides in the debate. Conservatives used it to call attention to a threatening possibility if the law was passed, while gay activists used it as a pledge to fight its limitations. “The next step is the Church,” a headline announced in the Danish daily Politiken as the partnership law was voted through in Norway in 1993. The chair of LBL, Else Slange, said in an interview that the next step in Denmark must be to convince the Danish People's Church to let lesbians and gays marry in the Church. Other tasks for the Danish gay and lesbian organisation, Slange said, would be to work for free insemination for lesbian women in the national health system, and to change the law to make it possible for partners in registered partnership to adopt their partner's children. She concluded that the LBL looked forward to the next parliamentary session in order to make this “adjustment of the partnership law.” Slange thus considered Church marriages to be a mere adjustment of the law, and that the following steps should be insemination for lesbians and adoption rights for registered partners. This was exactly what the opponents of partnership laws warned about. When the Swedish law proposal was debated in the Riksdag in 1994, the chair of the Standing Law Committee, Maj-Lis Lööw, tried to calm the opponents by assuring them that no such adjustments would take place. “Some ask if this is not only the first step. After this will come adoption, mutual child custody, and insemination,” she said. “Demands have indeed been made concerning these issues. I can only answer for me and for the Social Democratic Party. This is the step. It is not the first step.” Lööw's words have been quoted many times, and she has been accused of hypocrisy, since she ought to have known that the next steps would come. When she was interviewed in 2006, she said it was necessary to make clear that what was voted upon that day was only the registered partnership law and nothing else.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Odd CouplesA History of Gay Marriage in Scandinavia, pp. 145 - 166Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2012