Date: Mon, 2 Jan 1995 16:06:00 -0500 From: David B. O'Donnell To: Multiple recipients of list GLB-NEWS Subject: SWEDEN: First Same-Sex Couple Registered Their Partnership [ Send all responses to Bjorn.Skolander@NORDISKA.UU.SE only. Any responses to the list or list-owners will be returned to you. ] January 2, 1995 Today the first Registered Partnership ceremony in Sweden took place in O"stersund between Sven-Olov Jansson (58) and Hans Jonsson (43). On a journalist's question why it is important to be able to register one's partnership, Hans Jonsson answered: "we are now finally accepted by Swedish society, and we have now got almost the same rights as heterosexuals". The ceremony was officiated by former MP Jo"rn Svensson. Svensson is a long- time supporter of gay and lesbian rights, and in 1973 he was the first politician ever to advocate same-sex marriages. In his speech today Svensson stressed that the Registered Partnership Reform is a complete victory for the principle of justice and equality. Seen in a wider historical perspective same-sex marriages were already advocated in Sweden for more than one hundred years ago. The philosopher and professor Carl Pontus Wikner (1837-1888) proposed in his Psycological Confessions, that gay men and lesbians under certain conditions should be permitted same-sex marriages. The thought's of Pontus Wikner were, however, first known publicly in 1971, when his sealed manuscript was finally published. Bjorn Skolander bjorn.skolander@nordiska.uu.se