Archive Version of
Partners Task Force for Gay and Lesbian Couples
Online from 1995-2022

Demian and Steve Bryant originally founded Partners as a monthly newsletter in 1986. By late 1990 it was reformatted into a bi-monthly magazine. Print publication was halted by 1995 when Demian published Partners as a Web site, which greatly expanded readership.

In 1988, the Partners National Survey of Lesbian & Gay Couples report was published; the first major U.S. survey on same-sex couples in a decade.

In 1996, Demian produced The Right to Marry, a video documentary based on the dire need for equality that was made clear by the data from the survey mentioned above. The video featured interviews with Rev. Mel White, Evan Wolfson, Phyllis Burke, Richard Mohr, Kevin Cathcart, Faygele benMiriam, Benjamin Cable-McCarthy, Susan Reardon, Frances Fuchs, Tina Podlodowski, and Chelle Mileur.

Demian has been the sole operator during the last two decades of Partners.

Demian stopped work on Partners Task Force in order to realize his other time-consuming projects, which include publishing the book “Operating Manual for Same-Sex Couples: Navigating the rules, rites & rights” - which is now available on Amazon. The book is based on the Partners Survey mentioned above, his interviews of scores of couples, and 36 years of writing hundreds of articles about same-sex couples. It’s also been informed by his personal experience in a 20-year, same-sex relationship.

Demian’s other project is to publish his “Photo Stories by Demian” books based on his more than six decades as a photographer and writer.


Partners Task Force for Gay & Lesbian Couples
Demian, director    206-935-1206    demian@buddybuddy.com    Seattle, WA    Founded 1986

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Committed Couple
Axel Axgil and Eigil Axgil

Axel Axgil and Eigil Axgil, World’s first couple
to obtain a “Registered Partnership.”
Just after the ceremony, Copenhagen, Denmark, October 1, 1989.

Axel Axgil and Eigil Axgil passing by city hall
after their “Registered Partnership” ceremony.

Axel founded the Danish gay society F-48 and the Norwegian DNF-48. In 1954, he founded the International Homosexual World Organisation.

The men combined their last names — Eigil Eskildsen and Axel Lundahl-Madsen — to form Axgil as a form of defiance. The police had threatened that the two men live apart after release from prison in 1956. The charges of “speculation in lust” stemmed, in large part, from distributing non-sexual photographs of male nudes. One of the men had served a year, and the other a year-and-a-half.

Eigil Axgil died 1995. The couple had been together 46 years.


Photographs by Anja Tollan.
Image © 2000, Axel Axgil & Eigil Axgil
Rights to photos of Axel and Eigil belong to Hans Christian Thaysen.
More photos and information may be found at the 1st Partnership Page.
Contents © 2006, Partners Task Force

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