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by Rex Wockner
INTERNET GAY AREAS READERS:
A DAY OR TWO AGO I UPLOADED SOME RAW DATA CONCERNING THE STATE OF
GAY MARRIAGE ISSUES AROUND THE GLOBE (BECAUSE AN EDITOR HAD ASKED
ME TO SEARCH MY HARD DRIVE ON THIS TOPIC). SEVERAL PEOPLE HAVE
SINCE E-MAILED ME POINTING OUT THAT I LEFT OUT MY FIRST-HAND
COVERAGE OF OCT. 1, 1989 -- THE DAY DENMARK BECAME THE FIRST
COUNTRY IN THE WORLD TO ALLOW GAY MARRIAGE. SO, HERE IS THAT
COVERAGE. REX WOCKNER
DANES MAKE HISTORY: GAYS LEGALLY MARRY
by Rex Wockner
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PULL QUOTE: "If everyone comes out of the closet, then this will
happen everywhere." --67-year-old Eigil Axgil.
- ----------------------------------------------------------------
COPENHAGEN -- In what is being hailed as a fundamental turning
point in the fight for gay and lesbian equality, 11 gay-male
couples were legally married Oct. 1 in the Copenhagen, Denmark,
Town Hall.
Denmark is the first country in the world to allow
gay/lesbian marriage and this was the day the new law took
effect. The grooms included a high school teacher, a Lutheran
minister and a school psychologist.
As hoards of reporters from all over the world stampeded for
interviews, the 11 marriages were compared with such watershed
gay events as the 1969 Stonewall Revolt in New York City, the
650,000-strong 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay
Rights and the 1988 mobilization in Great Britain against
homophobic Clause 28.
"This is one of the five most important days ever in the
lesbian and gay struggle," boasted one jubilant celebrant to
Copenhagen's "Pink Radio" station. The Copenhagen daily newspaper
Berlingske Tidende dubbed the 11 weddings, simply, "the event of
the year."
At the center of the festivities was 74-year-old Axel Axgil
and his 67-year-old partner of 40 years, Eigil Axgil. Axel
founded the Danish gay rights movement by coming out of the
closet in 1948. He was fired from his job the very next day.
"I'm quite overwhelmed with all these people and the press,"
Axel said through a translator, "but it's overall very
beautifully put together."
"We just never could have dreamed we would get this far,"
added Eigil. "Of course, we always hoped we would be fully
accepted and have the same rights as others."
Eigil said he was not troubled at being married amidst a
"media circus" because it is "the necessary price you pay for
making world history."
Many other gay and lesbian couples saw it differently,
however, and postponed their weddings until later. Activists with
the National Association for Gays and Lesbians (LBL) had thought
that 50 to 100 couples might marry Oct. 1, but as the historical
significance of the day became more apparent, several couples
backed out.
Only three of the 11 couples later attended a press
conference, including the pair that had been trailed for eight
days by a British Broadcasting Corporation documentary crew.
You Can Change The World
Asked if he had any words of encouragement for gay and
lesbian couples in other countries who might someday hope to be
married, Eigil Axgil said: "Be open. Come out. Keep fighting.
This is the only way to move anything. If everyone comes out of
the closet then this will happen everywhere."
LBL national president Else Slange agreed. "You must get
involved with politicians," she said. "Make them learn about you,
make them know what you are and how you think. You must also get
people in mainstream politics to be open as gays and lesbians."
Despite her obvious joy at LBL's success, Slange added that
she has a "personal ideological opposition to the ruler/ruled
model of heterosexual marriage" and would never get married
herself. "But now gays and lesbians can choose," she said, "and
that is very, very important."
It All Happened So Fast
The weddings themselves were surprisingly brief. Copenhagen
Vice-Mayor Tom Ahlberg addressed the group for two minutes,
reminding the grooms of their duties of "joint love, helpfulness
and tolerance."
Each couple then individually entered a small adjacent room
to answer the single question, "Will you take ... as a partner?"
After both men said 'yes,' they signed the marriage certificate
and made way for the next couple.
Photographers nearly got into fist fights jockeying for
position in the cramped space.
After all vows had been exchanged, the couples descended the
Town Hall steps into a hundreds-strong throng of well-wishers
flinging rice and confetti. Champagne flowed freely as the Danes
exclaimed "SkAl."
The three activist couples then made a dramatic exit in
horse-drawn carriages, winding through the narrow streets of
Copenhagen to a grand reception at the stylish LBL offices.
Many observers expressed surprise that no lesbians were
married on this first day. There was no clear explanation why,
but some activists suggested that it was a matter of "media
intimidation" or a "preference for privacy."
Details
There are two remaining problems with Denmark's new gay
marriage law. Homosexuals are not yet permitted to adopt
children. And the new legislation does not require the state
Lutheran church to offer gay marriage ceremonies. Activists are
fighting both omissions and expect the issue of church weddings
to be resolved first.
At least one partner in a Danish gay/lesbian marriage must
be a Danish citizen currently living in Denmark. According to Tom
Stoddard of New York's Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund,
the marriages will not be recognized in the 50 U.S. states, but
he said "it should make for fascinating test cases in the courts
should a couple emigrate and demand their rights."
Media
Copenhagen's four daily newspapers gave overwhelmingly
positive coverage to the weddings, with large color photographs
of the grooms kissing and carrying each other over the threshold.
But both state television channels buried the story in their
newscasts, with TV1 running only a three-minute report at the
very end of an hour-long broadcast.
Some Danish activists, however, insisted that the sparse TV
coverage was proof that homosexuality really is "no big deal" in
Denmark. They said they found it incredible that the BBC, The New
York Times and the American gay press had come all the way to
Copenhagen for their "little wedding."
== END OF ARTICLE 1 ==
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 this reporter 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 OF ARTICLE 2 ==
THE OTHER SIDE OF DENMARK
News Commentary by Rex Wockner
After the emotional high of covering the world's first 11
legal gay marriages in Copenhagen, I spent a few days in the
small Danish town of Odder, visiting Peter JOrgensen and his wife
Stine. Peter was an exchange student at my high school in 1974.
Odder is about 20 kilometers from Aarhus, Denmark's second
largest city, on the northern Jutland peninsula, a rural and
conservative part of the country.
It was a Thursday night and I headed off in search of the
only gay bar--The PAN Club. Like the Copenhagen PAN Club, the
Aarhus club is operated by the national activist group
Landsforeningen for Bosser og Lesbiske (LBL).
I got a really nice t-shirt out of my brief visit to the
Aarhus club, but unfortunately Thursday night was "ladies night,"
as the bartender put it.
"So, where do I meet gay men?" I asked.
"The only place, really, is to cruise the harbor, down by
Pier 2," he said.
Since journalists are required to be curious, I headed off
to do my duty. What I found, to my surprise, was cruising
nirvana.
Pier 2--huge, badly lit, and very warehouse motif--was
covered by large stacks of lumber with just enough space between
the piles for walkways and private niches. I wandered around the
maze in the cool night air for an hour or so, chatting with the
cruisers and doing whatever it is one does in such a situation.
And then suddenly someone ran by shouting that we all had to
get out fast because two cars of fag-bashers had arrived on the
scene.
Now, when you're from Chicago, it's a little difficult to
feel unsafe at any time in Denmark, but I figured the risk might
be real and wandered back to the pier entrance.
The fag-bashers, it turned out, were five teenaged boys and
one teenaged girl. After they had scared away all the men, they
retreated to a picnic table at a fast-food stand across the
street from the pier entrance.
By then, the only homosexual on the scene was me. The
journalist in me had to see the other side of the world's first
gay marriage country.
I sat in my car about 200 yards from the food stand and
watched the five boys put on a show.
They blew me kisses. They kissed each other on the lips.
They yelled "fag" at me in Danish. They grabbed each other from
behind and simulated anal intercourse.
My news nose led me closer. I parked at the food stand,
walked in, and ordered a hot chocolate.
As I waited for the powder to dissolve in the tepid water,
one boy laid another down on a picnic table, threw his legs up in
the air, and began aggressive simulated screwing.
I walked outside and sat at the next table. The fake sex,
real kissing, winking and (I'm guessing here) verbal fag-bashing
continued.
After ten minutes, I spoke. (Danes study English from fifth
grade on.)
"In America...," I began in loud, slow English. They stared
at me.
"In America," I said, "when somebody seems to hate
homosexuals as much as you do, we believe they are really
homosexuals themselves--homosexuals who haven't yet accepted
their homosexuality and are directing their bad feelings about
themselves toward others."
Silence.
And then all six of them quickly left.
Within seconds, their car sped around the front of the fast
food stand.
"Faggot!" somebody yelled out the car window, in perfect
English.
I wandered back over to the pier, but it was deserted.
== END OF ARTICLE 3 ==
Danish 101
News Commentary by Rex Wockner
I had been so busy snapping pictures and pleading for translations
that I didn't get emotional until a day later.
As I was walking away from the $1-per-reprint photo store, it
suddenly hit me that I had stood in the Copenhagen Town Hall (along with
3,000,000 other news reporters) and watched 11 gay male couples be
legally married.
A mere 20 years after Stonewall.
A hard-assed journalist should not admit it in print, but I think
one little Rex tear may have slipped down my cheek as I walked. The
autumn air evaporated it immediately--if it was really there at all. Real
journalists don't eat quiche.
The epicenter of the historic day, and the proximate cause of my
alleged tear, was 74-year-old Axel Axgil and his 67-year-old lover of 40
years Eigil Axgil.
The day after, as I repeatedly looked at their pictures in the
newspapers, warm fuzzies fuzzed through my jet-lagged body.
"These are the bravest, most amazing senior citizens in the world,"
I gushed to my straight Danish pal Peter.
Axel, you see, was the first person to come out of the closet in
Denmark. In 1948. He was fired the next day from his accounting job at an
auto body shop.
A few years later, Axel and Eigil took the "Ax" from "Axel" and the
"gil" from "Eigil" and legally changed their last names to "Axgil."
Fifteen years before Stonewall.
Maybe you think this is no big deal because it was, after all,
Denmark.
As the Chicago Sun-Times said in its story about the wedding,
"Chicago isn't Copenhagen."
But you and the Sun-Times are wrong on this one.
According to activists with the Danish Association of Gays and
Lesbians, the last Danish police list of homosexuals wasn't destroyed
until the early '80s.
And Denmark certainly has its Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons. A
group of so-called "Christians" stood outside the Town Hall during the
wedding screaming about Sodom and Corinthians (or was it Gomorrah and
Leviticus?)
It is also important to remember that the law permitting gay
marriage passed Parliament last May by a vote of 71-47. Thirty-four
percent of elected Danish politicians think gay weddings are a stupid
idea.
So don't think Denmark is another planet.
It is your basic bourgeois, industrialized, expensive, angst-ridden,
modern social-democratic state. Not so different from the U.S.--just a
little more socialized, a little wealthier, a little mellower. It doesn't
feel like a "foreign country." Heck, a higher percentage of Danes speak
English than Chicagoans or New Yorkers.
So, I walked up to Eigil just after his marriage and asked him what
he had to say to gay and lesbian couples in other countries who might
hope to someday be married.
Eigil did not hesitate: "If everyone comes out of the closet, then
this will happen everywhere. Be open. Come out. Keep fighting. This is
the only way to move anything."
Hardly a news bulletin.
We already know that the reason "Chicago is not Copenhagen" has
nothing to do with fundamentalists, with the Human Rights Commission,
with the Illinois Gay & Lesbian Task Force, with Penny-The-Pig Pullen,
with Jim See-My-Wife Thompson's signatures on stupid AIDS laws.
We already know that the reason the "Chicago is not Copenhagen" and
the U.S. is not Denmark has nothing to do with fundamentalists, with the
Human Rights Commission, with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education
Fund, with Jesse Helms and Cardinal O'Connor.
We already know it has nothing to do with any of the things we might
try to blame it on.
The fault, we know, lies with most of us.
Most of us haven't told our boss, our grandma, our barber, our
Catholic aunts and uncles, and the strangers on the subway that we are
homosexuals.
We haven't told them, so they don't know what a homosexual looks
like.
We don't kiss good-bye on the subway, so they don't know that
homosexuals love each other.
And--Quel Mystery!--that's all there is to why "Chicago is not
Copenhagen."
Check it out with Axel and Eigil--the first legally married
homosexuals in the world.
Forty years ago, before there were any gay newspapers to bitch at
you, they did what you, for some unknown reason, are still afraid to do:
"BE OPEN. COME OUT. KEEP FIGHTING. THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO MOVE
ANYTHING. IF EVERYONE COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET, THEN THIS WILL HAPPEN
EVERYWHERE."
- -- end up archive upload
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