by Rex Wockner
International News
Seventy-one percent of Swedes favor moving beyond the nation's 14-year-old registered-partnership law and granting gay couples access to full marriage, a new poll has found.
The Sifo poll questioned 1,000 people in mid-January, asking, "Do you think homosexual couples should be able to legally wed and get married or do you think they should not be able to get married?"
Parliament is expected to legalize same-sex marriage by early 2009, making Sweden the seventh nation to do so.
All political parties support the move except for the Christian Democrats. The party holds only 6.6 percent of seats in Parliament but, in a complicating factor, is a member of the governing coalition.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has nonetheless been "very clear that there will be a government proposal," said Jon Voss, editor of Sweden's leading gay newspaper, QX.
"And the opposition will do whatever they can to take the law to Parliament, and by that create a split between the governing parties," Voss said.
Assistance: Bill Kelley
Filed from San Diego
