When you talk about queer rights in places like certain parts of the United States, there’s a chance that Sweden – among some other European nations – will be held up as an ideal to emulate.
In Sweden the gays have it good. Right?
The fight is largely won, which has brought the country into the sights of Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, who operate the site God Hates Sweden.
Still, as the country held its general election last Sunday two things were at the forefront of my mind.
One was that the openly gay parliamentarian Frederick Federley of the more libertarian Centre party was assaulted by four strangers outside his home.
Second was that the polished up and made-over neo-Nazi party, the Sweden Democrats, captured 5.7 percent of the popular vote and got into the country’s parliament.
In a poll conducted by European Union in 2006, 71 percent of the Swedes supported same sex marriages, for instance. No new such poll has been conducted since then.
The same-sex marriage law was passed in 2008 by the conservative-liberal coalition in power, became active on May 1st 2009. People rejoiced, and straight people rejoiced with everyone else.
Straight people do feel good about themselves, because they are tolerant and accepting. And no matter what issue, the majority society is behind LGBT-issues: from gay adoption to lesbian insemination.
They join in on the queer celebrations, and each July the capitol of Sweden hosts one of the continents biggest Pride parades.
Last August 35000 participants walked in the parade, and nearly half a million looked. This happened in Stockholm, a city with only about one million inhabitants.
Every politician of rank – including the Prime Minister – made a point to attend, and you even had a party leader debate about LGBT issues.
When asked, politician will give a vigorous defence of LGBT-rights, and even the Christian right will coat their antagonism in fine words to prevent public outrage.
So, Sweden would seem a fine country for gays, except that official statistics from the Crime Prevention Bureau (BRÅ) showed that about 1200 hate crimes were committed against LGBT-people in 2009.
That’s 24 hate crimes for every 10,000 LGTB-persons. The assault on Federley maybe wasn’t so unthinkable after all, nor was the election win of the Sweden Democrats.
As already mentioned, Sweden introduced same-sex marriage in 2008, and it has had gay adoptions since 2003. There has never been an issue about gays in the military.
There are strong anti-discrimination laws on the book, which is one reason why Fred Phelps hates Sweden.
In 2003 the Pentecostal pastor Åke Green was dragged to court for a sermon in which he called gays a “cancerous growth on society”, among other not so nice things.
He was eventually acquitted by the Swedish Supreme Court. However, even a clergyman in his own church isn’t safe from these laws.
Legally speaking, there seems to be nothing big left to do in Sweden. What remains the focus of the largest LGBT lobby group RFSL is to get some parenting issues sorted.
When Lesbians are inseminated (yes that’s legal too) it is not automatic that the woman’s spouse becomes a parent.
There are also transgender issues, like the requirement for sterilization in order to legally change your gender.
Gay men can go on do what gay men do; being fabulous.
If it just wasn’t for those hate crime statistics, and that the people committing the hate crimes just got parliamentary representation.
If you live in a country where national leaders condemn homosexuality and homosexuals, it might seem rich to problematize this utopia for gay people.
To paraphrase Jackie Kennedy, a queer would much rather cry in Sweden than in Texas. If you got all this equality in law, and if you have such strong anti-discrimination laws, what is the problem?
While I visited the old country I made a point to watch the TV networks, and found that they are clinically clean from gay people, stereotypes or not.
Gay people do exist in the few TV-series that survive transit from the UK or from the USA, and these shows only run on cable TV. The people I contacted to ask about it either didn’t understand the question, or simply didn’t bother to respond.
– I wouldn’t say we are bad at it, said a program director of the largest TV-corporation in Sweden. But it is a very niche market that we don’t have the budget to cover at the moment.
The overwhelming sense I get from the people I’ve talked to is that the majority loves you, and protects you, and accepts you, but they don’t engage with you.
The issues aren’t spoken of any longer, because we have got it all. Shouldn’t we just be happy about that?
Tags: elections, entertainment, gay, general election, homophobia, homosexuality, lgbt, media, sweden
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