by Rex Wockner
International News Briefs
Sweden's new law allowing gay couples to marry took effect May 1.
"It means that our love is worth the same as everybody else's," said Alf Karlsson who, in one of the first ceremonies, married Johan Lundqvist at Stockholm City Hall.
Both men are local politicians in Uppsala north of Stockholm. Green Party co-leader Maria Wetterstrand officiated the wedding.
The newspaper Dagens Nyheter quoted the couple as saying jointly: "We met on the Internet nine years ago. And now we are here. It has taken a few years, but finally! It is a very big and exciting day; it is wonderful that society finally accepts our relationship as a marriage."
Sweden has had a registered-partnership law since 1995 that granted same-sex couples the rights and obligations of marriage.
Gay couples also can marry in Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain and the U.S. states of Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts and, starting in September, Maine and Vermont.