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By Rex Wockner
International News Report
The two men exchanged rings and departed the stately hall in a shower of rice. "A politician does not need courage to admit his homosexuality," Lund told Agence France-Presse. "The important thing is to be natural, to behave like others, to love like other people, not to fear prejudice and rumors -- and to show overtly that one is homosexual, because it is not an illness.
Denmark was the first country in the world to legalize marriage- like gay partnerships, in October 1989. Registered gay couples have all the rights of opposite-sex spouses except for access to adoption, church weddings and artificial-conception procedures. There have been 4,338 gay marriages in the past 11 years, according to AFP. In the earlier years, gay men were more likely to take advantage of the partnership law but recently more lesbians than gay men have gotten married. Hanne Moeller, spokeswoman for Denmark's National Association for Gays and Lesbians, speculated: "Women in the beginning were a bit skeptical of registered partnerships. They did not want to be too much like heterosexuals. They did not like to be 'normalized.' ... But now we have a new generation of lesbians who find it natural to have a family and to raise kids." |
Torben Lund 