From: [email-masked] (Rex Wockner)
Date: Sat, 21 May 1994 11:09:09 -0700 (PDT)

{ ARTICLE PULLED FROM FREE-LANCE JOURNALIST REX WOCKNER'S 
ARCHIVES. ARTICLE WRITTEN OCT. 1, 1989, IN COPENHAGEN, DENMARK. 
ARTICLE HEADED FOR QRD ARCHIVES. } 

ARTICLE #2 OF 3

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How The Danes Did It
 
An Interview with LBL President Else Slange
 
by Rex Wockner
 
        Else Slange, a high school teacher, is the president of
Landsforeningen for Bosser og Lesbiske, the Danish National Association
for Gays and Lesbians. On Oct. 1, the day of Denmark's historic, first-
in-the-world gay weddings, she sat down for an interview with [NAME OF
THIS NEWSPAPER] and The New York Times. The transcript has been abridged.

Rex Wockner: Why was Denmark the first country in the world to allow gay
and lesbian marriage?

Else Slange: We are one of the countries in which there is one of the
oldest homosexual organizations. You could think that Holland should have
been first, because they have the oldest organization, but they have been
stuck on the problem of legally supporting your spouse if one loses a
job. The law says you have to take care of the other economically. You
are legally regarded as a couple.
        Gays and lesbians, of course, have very strong feelings about being
two individuals in a couple. In our minds, nobody is officially taking
care of the other. We don't like it that in marriage the man is the ruler
and she is just to be there make food and so on. And I know they've had
trouble with this in Holland and have said they're not going to try to
have a kind of homosexual marriage. 
        But what we in Denmark have said is that equal rights is basic. So,
if you can get married as a heterosexual, I want to be able to get
married--even if I don't want personally to get married--I should have
the right.

RW: So, how did Danish activists circumvent this economic unit problem?

ES: The discussion, of course, has been quite touchy for years. We asked
not to have this economic binding in the gay partnership law, but the
Social Democrats and the Socialistic Folk Party said, 'You can't get
something and not get it all. You have to have the responsibility when
you get the freedom.' So, they insisted on equalizing heterosexual and
homosexual marriage.
        So, we finally felt that equal rights are more important than this
economic problem. In our minds, we'll still be individuals though the law
regards us as something else. We also knew that if we got this bill
through, then we could get heterosexuals who are living together without
papers to join us in changing both marriage law and the gay-partnership
law.

RW: Philosophically, why was Denmark first? The world thinks of Denmark
as sexually free, but it must be more complicated than that.

ES: It has something to do with the Lutheran religious tradition which
has opened itself up to different kinds of thinking. That does something
to the community and thoughts become more free. If we had had a Catholic
state church, it would have been more difficult. In Holland, you have
different religions but here the power of the church is not very big
anymore.

RW: Tell me about the strictly political side of your success.

ES: We came to personally know a lot of politicians and that opened up
the chance to go into discussion and to put the myths [about
homosexuality] on the table. I think that what we have now and what we
got from the lobbying is the possibility for people to ask us questions
so that we get visible. 
        It is very difficult for heterosexuals to come and ask me general
questions about homosexuality. But what they were able to do is discuss
the [marriage] bill with me. So, it opened up the discussion.

RW: What advice would you give to gay leaders in other Western countries?
It [gay marriage] seems a bit impossible presently in the U.S.

ES: Even in San Francisco, Los Angeles?

RW: Marriage laws are state laws--as in the 50 states--and California as
a whole is not particularly liberal.

ES: Well, that is a difficult question for me. I've never been there and
I don't know the community or very many U.S. gays and lesbians. What I
can talk about is gays and lesbians in mainstream politics. We must get
involved with politicians--make them learn about you, know what you are
and how you are and how you think--and we must get people in mainstream
politics to be open as gays and lesbians. Perhaps that's old news, so I'm
not sure I have any new advice.

RW: Some gay leaders think gays don't have enough faith in themselves,
that we're kind of our own worst enemies. When I don't kiss my boyfriend
good-bye at the metro stop, perhaps I could have and no one would have
cared.

ES: Yes, self-censorship. I understand that. I have a splinter of that.
We have that in Denmark. But I live in Copenhagen. If I were living in a
town in North Jutland [rural Denmark], I think I should be more self-
censoring. It's not anything to go down the street hand-in-hand in
Copenhagen. The Danish TV took pictures of it yesterday and nobody
looked. Well, they looked because there were TV cameras. That's
Copenhagen. It differs in small cities and villages. It can be very
difficult to be the only two [gays] in a small village. But those
conservative thoughts will be altered by the right to marry. It has
changed already. My lover and I were on state television and got the
opportunity to say all that we wanted.

RW: Will you get married?

ES: No. I'm very happy about the organization's victory. It means
acceptance and legal rights. But I have a personal ideological opposition
against it because of the economic relationship. I should be frightened
if all that is in [heterosexual] marriage today should be put over into
the [gay/lesbian] partnerships--that you should go into those bad ways of
living together with one ruling and the other being ruled. I wouldn't get
married if I were a heterosexual. But I'm happy now for the ones who want
it and now can get it. They can choose.

==END==