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This June was a month of double celebration in Norway.

Firstly, the gender-neutral marriage law was passed, making Norway only the sixth country in the world to legalise same sex marriage. Furthermore, this was in the form of eradicating the gender specific language in the previous marriage law and rewriting the constitution.

Secondly of course, gay pride rolled around once more.

My lover and I entered a registered partnership (exclusively for homosexuals) to celebrate our love and made a commitment on the very same day that the gender neutral marriage law was put forth in Parliament here. Our partnership has thus since been automatically converted to full marriage (as I indicated was imminent in my last TLL post).

To cut to the chase, my partner (in fact spouse) and I were asked to help carry the rainbow flag on the day of the march. This was my first Norwegian Pride (my lover and I fled the UK seeking a more homotolerant society – for those unaware of the considerable surge in homophobia in the UK I refer you to the recent and first ever Stonewall survey on UK homophobia which clearly lays out some of the issues there). As such it was with mixed feelings that I carried the flag here in Norway, both Pride to be out and in glorious technicolour and with a certain sense of wistfulness at the fleeting nature of a day where gayness and queerness is celebrated. (For fellow numerates, one day out of 365 for gay celebration constitutes just 0.27 % of the year, arguably a figure that is disproportionately too low.)

Oslo Gay Pride 2008

My lover (now spouse) is in fact a photographer and artist although here fingers were otherwise occupied in flag bearing, ironically I don’t have any photos of us carrying the flag (there seem to be a large number of gay male photographers who took plenty of snaps of well… gay males, ie. the other 4 flag bearers). Although ironically, I did hear someone in the nearby crowd comment to the person beside them, after just scrutinising those of us with the flag: “They’re all gay men”

I dug up a picture of some dykes on bikes who caused quite a stir instead though. The rest of the day disappeared in a flurry of champagne bubbles and plenty of public displays of same sex affection. In an example of the latter my partner and I inadvertently held up a tramload of people at the end of the march when we were mid-kiss and failed to notice we’d stopped on tramlines before an oncoming tram, which obligingly screeched to a halt and politely waited. In England a public announcement on the railways blamed stoppages on “leaves on the line”, I wonder if we spawned one in the same vein: “lesbians on the line”.