here's the copy of the report publish by the gay newscenter. read read read!
by Gay Newscenter Staff
Posted: March 19, 2007 - 7:00 pm ET
(Stockholm) If the Swedish Parliament accepts a government funded report recommending it amend its civil unions law to allow same-sex couples to marry the Church of Sweden says it will perform marriage ceremonies.
Even if lawmakers decide to maintain civil unions the Church said it will conduct ceremonies for gay couples, and those ceremonies would be the same as a wedding liturgy except the word marriage would be amended for gay couples to state union.
The decision by the Church's leaders make the Swedish denomination one of only a handful in the world to conduct gay marriages. In Canada the United Church - that country's largest Protestant denomination - conducts same-sex marriages, along with some Reform Synagogues and the Unitarian Church and the Metropolitan Community Churches. Unitarian and MCC churches also perform gay marriages in Massachusetts - the only state in the US where same-sex marriage currently is legal.
Sweden's civil partnership law was enacted in 1995 and gives most of the rights and obligations of marriage to same-sex couples who register. But the country's LGBT community last year stepped up lobbying to have the law amended to permit gays and lesbians to marry.
The Church of Sweden currently performs blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples but the church does not register them. To do that couples must sign a civil registry at a government office.
The new position adopted by the church would end the need for going to a civil registry office and treat gay couples in the same way as opposite-sex couples married in the church.
If a gay marriage bill is adopted by Parliament the same and opposite-sex couples would have church marriages.
That the Church accepted the recommendations of the government report before it is presented to Parliament is expected to put considerable pressure on lawmakers to approve the gay marriage plan.
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