FORBIDDEN LOVE - STILL AN ISSUE?

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Love, a wonderful feeling of having butterflies in your stomach?
Or love, a painful struggle, fighting for the right to be with the one you want?

There are some things that everybody shares, whoever they are, wherever they live and whatever status they have. Time and air is two of them, love is a third.
We all have exactly 24 hours per day to do the things we need, and we all have exactly the same volume of air to breathe. Love is something that everybody needs, and that’s the cheapest but most appreciated gift you can give away. And yet - do we all really get equally with love? And are we all allowed to give our love to anyone we want?

When we talk about ‘’forbidden love’’ I think most people associate to the Muslims and countries where arranged marriages are more common than marriage by love.
And I can admit that when we were first given this assignment, I directly came to think about Fadime Sahindal. She was a Turkish woman who was murdered, shoot in the head by her own father. The murder was called an honour killing. The reason why Mr Sahindal shoot his daughter to death was because she had a Swedish boyfriend who she wanted to marry. The father considered Fadime to embarrass the Sahindal-family and therefore he killed her.

I don’t think I was the only one having these thoughts about how to write the assignment.
Forbidden love is Muslims, countries in the Middle East, violence, murders and hate for us.
It is easy to judge and be biased about immigrants, but when you think about it is not only in Turkish families that forbidden love is a fact.
I know many Swedish girls who are not allowed to have boyfriends with a foreign background. Their parents don’t approve, mostly because they don’t like their culture and religions.

If you look at the past you can really talk about forbidden love, even here is Sweden.
If you had money and came from burgen family you couldn’t just go and marry some crofter or farmer. No, you had to marry someone who could help you establish and manage your wealth. Rich girls especially had to marry a well-off man who could support them and maintain their legacy. And of course, if you were a blacksmith you had to watch out for falling in love with the noble mans daughter. You had to find someone of your own kind to spend the rest of your life with.

‘’Your own kind’’, that seems to be a current rule. If you are Chinese you should marry a Chinese and if you’re a Swede you should marry a Swede. If a white girl is dating a black guy people always raise their eyebrows. It looks weird and wrong. Look at supermodel Heidi Klum and singer Seal, they are married and seem to have a healthy and happy relationship to each other and also to their sweet little daughter. But many people seem to have a problem with them being together. As I wrote above, they think it looks wrong – a white girl should date a white guy. It’s strange, when you think about it, how our minds are functioning.
When it comes to colours, our minds always have to match. When it comes to relationships the two involved has to bee the same kind, race, colour and sometimes social status.
But how about the rule about being with your own kind when it comes to the same sex?

To be a homosexual in today’s society is much more accepted than it was ten years ago, but still there is much hates and dislikes towards the gay and lesbians. In some countries it’s forbidden by law to have a homosexual relationship and in some places homosexuals are risking their lives if they choose to be open with their disposition. In Sweden there’s no law against homosexual relationships and it’s much more acceptant here than in many other places in the world. But unfortunately ‘’more acceptant’’ doesn’t mean a hundred percent accepted.
It’s not unusual with hate crimes where the gay or lesbian person is being abused and humiliated. Sometimes it ends with a murder. Homosexuals also haven’t got the same rights when it comes to marriages and adopting children.

I believe all this could be described as fear. We know so little of each other and foreign cultures, practices and customs. Things we are not used to do are always a bit scary before we have tried it. I was very nervous the first time I went horseback riding, but once I had tried it I never wanted to get off that poor horse! I don’t think this is a problem that we can solve right away, for when it comes to prejudices and lack of knowledge there’s nothing that just disappears. There is no medicine against fear, and to defeat fear it takes knowledge.

Forbidden love is really an issue, in all countries, religions, societies and families.
It’s funny why it even exists, for isn’t the right to love whoever you want just a matter of course? I believe so, and I hope that when my children grows up and falls in love I’m not going t...