The pragmatic cast of Scandinavian same-sex unions likely goes further still. While half of Scandinavian partners say they marry chiefly for the benefits, as many as one third of Scandinavian partners likely have a very specific benefit in mind. Around one third of Scandinavian registered partnerships involve a foreign-born member. The numbers are particularly striking for men. In Norway, 43 percent of male partnerships include a non-Norwegian citizen. In Sweden, the figure is 45 percent. Many of these cross-national unions are with non-Europeans. This huge disproportion of dual-nationality unions suggests that many Scandinavian same-sex couples have married chiefly to facilitate immigration. Andersson and Noack clearly recognize this phenomenon. Eskridge and Spedale downplay it. They call immigration rights “only the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to the benefits of same-sex unions. Yet the numbers say that unions contracted primarily for immigration purposes probably represent, not merely the tip, but a huge part of the base of the iceberg. This suggests that, among the already extremely small number of Scandinavian same-sex partnerships, a far smaller number are undertaken for anything like “conservative” reasons. So after an experiment in same-sex marriage that has lasted between one and two decades, Scandinavian marriage rates are still exceedingly low. As many as half of all partnerships may be undertaken primarily for legal benefits, and only secondarily, if at all, out of a “conservative” attitude toward union formalization. About a third of all same-sex unions involve non-citizens, often from non-European countries. Many of these partnerships would likely not have been entered at all were it not for the immigration rights. In short, if registered partnerships were designed to bring a more stable and conservative family ethos to Scandinavia’s gays, far too few have married for this to have happened. And the actual attitudes of Scandinavian gays toward their marriages may be even less conservative than the numbers we’ve seen so far indicate. In Part II of “Why So Few?” we’ll see why. –Stanley Kurtz is a fellow at the Hudson Institute.