Jens Rydström

Odd Couples: A History of Gay Marriage in Scandinavia

The concept of marriage as a union of a man and a woman was fundamentally challenged by the introduction of registered partnership in Denmark in 1989. Odd Couples is the first comprehensive history of registered partnership and gay marriage in Scandinavia. It traces the origins of laws which initially were extremely controversial—inside and outside the gay community—but have now gained broad popular and political support. Through a comparison of how these laws have been received and practiced in all of the Scandinavian countries, the author presents a nuanced study of a fascinating political process that began in the 1960s and continues through the present day.

Legalizing Love in a Cold Climate: The History, Consequences and Recent Developments of Registered Partnerships in Scandinavia

Why was Scandinavia the first place in the world to introduce national laws allowing registered partnership between same-sex couples? This article is a survey and historical documentation of the registered partnership laws throughout Scandinavia, documenting their origin in Denmark in 1989 and their subsequent adoption by every Nordic country. The origins of the laws are traced to the 1970s criticism of the nuclear family, the AIDS epidemic, a general cultural emphasis of consensus, and the structure of the welfare state. The article investigates what the new homosexual family unit is permitted to be, and asks whether the new laws have proven to be liberatory, or a means of subtle repression and control.

Binding of dietary Cobalt to sarcoplasmic reticulum proteins

It has previously been shown that cobalt accumulates in the myocardium of rats, mainly the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) and the mitochondrial inner membrane. In order to investigate the mode of accumulation of cobalt in the SR, rats were given a dietary cobalt supplementation of 40 mg of CoSO4 x 7H2O kg-1 body wt, after which the rats were sacrificed and the sarcoplasmic reticulum was isolated. The SR proteins were subjected to analysis by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis followed by protein staining and determination of the content of cobalt in each protein band. The major cobalt-binding protein was found to have a molecular weight of about 100,000; a 200,000 molecular weight protein was also found to bind cobalt, although less extensively. These results suggest that cobalt is bound to the monomeric and dimeric forms of Ca(2+)-ATPase in the SR of the myocardium.

From sodomy to homosexuality: Rural sex and the inclusion of lesbians in criminal discourse

This article summarizes the results of an extensive study of more than 2,000 court cases concerning “unnatural fornication” in Sweden between 1880 and 1950. Presenting statistics and three case studies, the author argues that urbanization brought with it a sexual paradigm shift. Before the 1930s, sexual discourse was determined by an archaic rural sodomy paradigm, which loosely defined the sins of Sodom as penetrative sex without the purpose of reproduction. Rapid modernization, however, disrupted the old ways of defining licit and illicit sexual expression. The new, urban homosexuality paradigm draws a sharp line between heterosexuality and homosexuality and interprets any sign of affection between persons of the same sex as a symptom of homosexuality, an inborn disposition found in a limited number of individuals. The modern paradigm does not include other sexual practices, such as bestiality, which have disappeared from the sexual discourse. On the other hand, it does accommodate sex between women within its interpretative framework, and lesbian sexuality has become incorporated in legal and medical discourse.