När staten talar om kärlek

Normalitet och temporalitet i svenska statliga utredningar om äktenskap och samboende

Abstract

The article explores the introduction of the concept of love in government commissioned reports in the 1980s as it was used for portraying same-sex relationships as normal and comparable to heterosexual relationships. The article is a discourse analysis focusing on the uses of love and constructions of homosexuality and the normal couple in governmental inquiries. Following international studies on love as a political technology, the article concludes, on the one hand, that the concept of love in the Swedish case creates sameness and makes possible an inclusion of same-sex relationships in the regulations of intimacy. On the other hand, the article concludes that the inclusion of same-sex relationships in the regulations of intimacy is conditioned on constructions of normality and on same-sex couples living up to expectations of coupledom and stability. Temporality is central for this process of normalization as it points to discursive constructions of historical and contemporary Sweden as tolerant and modern.