When registered partnership was introduced in Sweden, the Justice Department distributed an information folder about the new law. Its front page showed two male figures, dressed in funny clothes and funny little hats and holding a red heart. They had thick red lips and large pants and coats. They were unmistakably clowns. Inside the folder was a list of the new law's limitations. Registered partners were not allowed to adopt children, neither individually nor as a couple. They were denied access to insemination or any other kind of assisted fertilisation, and they could not be appointed as legal trustees or have joint custody of under-age children. Furthermore, they had no right to a church wedding, and at least one of the partners had to be a Swedish citizen residing in the country. However, the folder stated that they had the right to carry the same family name, and this was illustrated by two female figures in front of a door with the arch-Swedish name Olsson on it. Just like their male counterparts they had big red lips and large staring eyes. They were blond and conventionally feminine, in a grotesque sort of way.

How the Swedish Government chose to visualise the law on registered partnership in 1995 is deeply disturbing. By offering terms similar to those for heterosexual couples but with the above restrictions, the state was prepared to incorporate homosexuals in the majority culture in ways that would make them completely harmless. Who could be afraid of these silly clowns? They posed no threat whatsoever to the majority's children or to the adults’ immune systems. Moreover, being pictured as very blond and very blue-eyed Swedish Olssons signalled that the law was for Swedish citizens. It can serve as a reminder that, ever since they were first introduced, the laws on registered partnership in the Scandinavian countries have been connected with national identity. Opponents of the laws feared that their home country would be shamed internationally, while a growing majority saw it as a source of national pride, as if the perceived tolerance and open-mindedness of their Government had in some way worn off on themselves.