From Death Penalty to Church Weddings

Abstract

The account of why during the 1980s and 1890s homosexuals gained equal legal rights and were generally accepted in Denmark. The main drive in the decriminalisation of homosexuals in the 1930s was a rise in the political and legal system of liberal values combined with a commitment to the legal principle of consistency. The decriminalisation slowly allowed homosexuals to live openly, and this in turn created a public demand for equal rights for homosexuals, like the right to marriage. Here, first, law was a dynamic creating a change in social morality, and then later, public morality had evolved further, leading to the demand that the law was morally updated.