– Thus, we have two jubilees, actually!
If you ask Alf Karlsson so he can and her husband Johan Lundqvist celebrate the marriage more often than many other married couples. When they got married ten years ago, they had already had time to conclude a registered partnership five years prior to that.
– The first jubileumsdatumet is the date when we think that we were married, namely, when we entered into the registered partnership. To enter into a real marriage was more of a kind of confirmation of it, ” says Alf Karlsson.
in Palo Alto in California when the DN is calling him. His husband Johan Lundqvist is a visiting researcher at Stanford University, therefore, living the couple of the moment in the united states, along with their four year old son. This weekend was Alf and Johan to visit in the Sonoma Valley, where they purchased a bottle of bubbly – just in time for tennbröllopsfirandet.
– We intend to drink a little champagne on the balcony, it is a good way to celebrate, ” says Alf Karlsson.
Alf Karlsson and Johan Lundqvist was one of the first pairs that russia under the new law on same-sex marriage, which entered into force on 1 may 2009. Photo: Lina Alriksson
At the time of her marriage, was both gentlemen are active politicians in the green Party. Several MP-politician was on the spot at the wedding ceremony, including the then-spokesperson Maria Wetterstrand that acted as registrar.
stance for the pair; for them it was important to show that their love was just as much worth in society’s opinion, which others love.
– this ”partnership” felt like some sort of b-variant that is made just for people who are a little different. It had been something else, if you had any kind of registered partnership for all, any kind of bourgeois marriage, and then had the wish to have some other sort of äktenskapsceremoni, ” says Alf Karlsson.
– Now we have not had it so, and that’s why it was so important that society can finally say that our love is worth as much and beautiful as heterosexual couples, he continues.
– as soon As there will be things we don’t feel comfortable with so we talk about it to each other. I am quite straight and clear with what I like and don’t like, and Johan is – not always, but usually – very clear with what he thinks.
According to Alf Karlsson has the pair for quite many years together, learned to talk about things and to do it before they go to bed. ”The more time you are together with each other, the more you have in common,” he says. But while the understanding of marriage becomes stronger with time so think Alf Karlsson see a development of society where tolerance of same-sex marriage rather become lower.
– If you had posed this question to me a year ago so I had probably said everything just becomes more and more positive, and that it feels like a non-issue. It is here that the gays and lesbian should be able to marry, it felt like the community was there when the amendment came.
Alf Karlsson, however, seemed to feel a kind of growing ”nykonservatism”, and less space for liberal values. According to him, therefore, there is reason to, once again, to take the fight for the right to live with the one you want.
” We have our marriage. But one should not take it for granted that it will be so in ten years, if this continues, ” says Alf Karlsson.
Annika Hamrud: ”It is a kind of genocide going on.”
