Abstract
Odd Couples is a prodigiously researched, comprehensive, and theoretically informed history of the adoption of registered partnership and marriage laws for same-sex couples in all of the Scandinavian countries, not just Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, but Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands as well. Jens Rydström’s extensive interviews, archival research, and analysis of statistical data on partnerships and marriages allow him to detail meticulously the varied routes each country and dependency took along the path to recognizing same-sex couples. Denmark in 1989 became the first country in the world to allow same-sex couples to register their partnerships. Norway followed in 1993, Sweden in 1994, Iceland and Greenland in 1996, and Finland in 2002. The Faroes still have no law. In 2009–2010, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland made marriage laws gender-neutral and abolished registered partnerships, making marriage identical for same-sex and heterosexual couples and allowing existing registered partners to transfer their partnerships into marriage if they chose.
Rydström tells a complicated story, focusing in thematic chapters on the movement struggle for recognition of partnerships, the role of the political parties, the implementation of the laws, gender and marriage statistics, and the trajectory from registered partnership to equality in other realms. He attends to differences between lesbians and gay men, the impact of the AIDS epidemic, the positions of various political parties, and struggles within the movement over the desirability of couple recognition, and he does all this with an eye to what was going on elsewhere in the world.
The Scandinavian cases provide an interesting contrast to the situation in the United States. It was gay men who primarily led the fight for partnership legislation and registered when they succeeded. Lesbian opposition or disinterest came originally from the feminist critique of marriage as a fundamentally patriarchal institution. Over time, the queer theory critique of marriage as homonormative—favoring same-sex couples who are just like married heterosexuals—added another dimension to the split within the movement over partnership and marriage as a desirable goal. Particularly galling to many was the fact that the original partnership legislation specifically excluded the adoption of children and the access of lesbians (as was true as well for single women) to reproductive technology. Pushing for the right to artificial insemination and the right to adopt children, including the adoption of a partner’s children, became a priority as soon as partnership legislation came into effect. These “next steps” accomplished, the lack of interest of lesbians in formal recognition of their relationships dissipated, and now more women than men register partnerships or marry. As Rydström puts it, gay men and lesbians “evolved from a childless minority on the margins of society to represent a reproductive segment of the majority culture, sometimes in compliance with xenophobic and neo-conservative nationalist discourses, and sometimes as agents for social change on an everyday level” (p. 21).
As this sentence makes clear, Rydström sets his analysis in the context of the theoretical and activist debates about the desirability of marriage as a goal for the queer movement and communities. He relates in the preface that he and his partner argued for two years about whether to register their partnership: his partner dismissed registration as “petit-bourgeois rubbish,” Jens just wanted a party. When Rydström finally won, they both found that the act had more importance for them than they expected, and reaction to the announcement in the local newspaper made clear that this was a political act. As this story suggests, Rydström takes a nuanced position on the question of whether same-sex marriage is an important civil right or an assimilationist cop-out. He traces both the extension of rights and greater acceptance of gay men and lesbians, and the decline of alternative intimate arrangements. Particularly striking is the rising rate of partnership registration since the turn of the century at the same time that the divorce rate for same-sex couples is higher than for heterosexuals. Given that there are few economic reasons to marry—the welfare state typically supports individuals rather than families, health benefits are not involved, and inheritance is less of an issue than in the United States—the increasing interest in marriage is intriguing. Rydström concludes that “the symbolic value attributed to marriage is enough” and that the “dream of a perfect marriage” is boosted by a developing marriage industry (143–44).
From a comparative perspective, the big question is why domestic partnership emerged first in the Scandinavian countries. Rydström addresses this question throughout the book, pointing to the structure of the welfare state, the political environment of multiple parties and shifting government coalitions, and the principles of fairness and equity central to Scandinavian social democracy. But he never loses sight of the agency of activists and politicians who kept pushing for reform. Most striking is the dramatic shift in public opinion in the 1990s, which he attributes to gay openness and assimilation, which in small societies have an outsized impact. Opponents feared and supporters hoped that same-sex partnership/marriage would serve as a foot-in-the-door to full equality, and in the aftermath of the early legislation, the gay/lesbian movements sought to eliminate the restrictions on partnerships, not only in relation to children but also the extension of citizenship to partners and access to church weddings. With the institution of gender-neutral marriage laws came, Rydström argues, the expectation that same-sex couples would act “according to the norms of society. Whether this will impoverish queer culture, or the minority culture of those who choose different sexualities, is yet to be seen” (p. 162).
Odd Couples is a valuable resource both for those primarily interested in the global story of same-sex marriage and for those intrigued by recent developments in family formation in Scandinavia. Rydström is thorough if sometimes repetitive, as he acknowledges is unavoidable with a thematic organization. He is also provocative. In a section of his conclusion titled “From clowns to clones,” he contrasts the depiction of same-sex couples in the first information folder produced by the Swedish Ministry of Justice as childless cartoonish clown figures with the futuristic possibility that gay men, with less access to children through either adoption or surrogacy, will take advantage of cloning to reproduce. It is safe to say that this will remain the definitive study of the process by which Scandinavia started the ball of gay marriage rolling.