First in the world

The church leadership announced this yesterday. “We are ready to combine homosexual couples in a partnership marriage that is valid in civil law,” said Bishop Bertil Utberg of Västerö. A draft new marriage law will be published next week. Different-sex and same-sex couples will be able to marry on equal terms. The church as a whole retains the right to perform weddings, but each priest will have to decide for himself whether to perform the ceremony or not. The Moscow Patriarchate suspended relations with the Lutheran Church of Sweden back in December 2005, when it decided to bless same-sex couples; now, obviously, a break is inevitable.