In just a few months, homosexuals will get the right to marry in the Church of Denmark – they will, in any case, if the new church minister has his way. The Copenhagen Post reports that the government plans to introduce a bill just after the New Year that will allow same sex couples to hold weddings in the Church of Denmark and be “married” under Danish law. Same sex couples are currently allowed to have “registered partnerships”, a civil status, but are barred from marriage and church weddings. “The first same-sex weddings will hopefully become reality in Spring 2012. I look forward to the moment the first homosexual couple steps out of the church. I’ll be standing out there throwing rice,” the new church minister, Manu Sareen, a Social Liberal, told Jyllands-Posten newspaper. Sareen’s appointment as church minister was one of the more controversial of the new coalition government. He is a professed religious “doubter”, who, before becoming church minister, came awfully close to writing himself off the national church registry, in direct protest against its long-standing ban on same sex marriage. “I’m not sure that there’s a god, unfortunately,” Sareen told Jyllands-Posten. “I wish I could believe it. Then I could say: there’s God and because of him I know what happens after we die.” But if the minister was uncertain about the existence of God, one thing he was absolutely certain of is that homosexuals deserve the same rights as heterosexuals. “I have many friends who are homosexuals and can’t get married. They love their partners the same way heterosexuals do, but they don’t have the right to live it out in the same way. That’s really problematic,” Sareen said, adding, “Today it would be unthinkable not to have female priests. That’s how it will also be for same-sex weddings.” Some local priests, like Henrik Højlund, who is the parish priest for Løsning and Korning and chairman for the Evangelical Lutheran Network (ELN), however, disagreed with the minister. “Lots of people are mistaken in thinking that homosexual weddings are just the next step after female priests. But it is much more consequential and beyond the boundaries for normal Christianity,” Højlund told Jyllands-Posten. “The Church of Denmark is being secularised right up to the alter in a desperate and mistaken attempt to meet modern people halfway,” he said, adding that same-sex marriage would be “fatal for the church”. In 1989 Denmark became the first country in the world to legalize civil unions between same sex partners. But the country stopped short of calling it “marriage” and same-sex couples still are not allowed to have marriage ceremonies in the Church of Denmark. Polls taken over the years, and right up until last week, have consistently shown that around 69-percent of the population supports same-sex marriage in the church. The Danish clergy and politicians have lagged behind popular opinion, however. Minister Sareen said church employees who are set against marrying homosexuals would not be forced to conduct same-sex ceremonies. “But we must also make it possible for homosexuals to marry in the church,” he added. Vivi Jelstrup, the co-chair of LGBT Danmark, the association for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transvestites in Denmark, expressed approval that Sareen and the new government are serious about allowing same-sex marriages in the Church of Denmark. But she wanted assurances that the law would also change to provide real equality across the board. “We also want to see the Justice Minister laying out the groundwork for gender-neutral marriages,” she told Jyllands-Posten.
Ten weeks ago, reports The Guardian, when David Norris quit the race to become Ireland's next president, damaged by an apparently devastating scandal, he crossed the Samuel Beckett bridge in Dublin and quoted the playwright. "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." Norris, a witty, boastful, posh, Protestant, piano-playing, unashamedly intellectual Joycean scholar, was the runaway favourite to become Ireland's new president in the elections on Thursday. He would have become the first openly gay president anywhere in the world. But key members of his campaign team abandoned him after it emerged that the senator wrote to the Israeli authorities on senate notepaper appealing for clemency over the conviction of his former lover, Ezra Yizhak, for having sex with a 15-year-old boy. Norris abandoned his independent candidacy and fled for a long holiday in Cyprus. Normal politics, in supposedly conservative Ireland, resumed, and more conventional candidates entered the race. After some weeks abroad, a member of staff phoned Norris. There were 3,000 emails in his inbox. Three were hostile. His Dublin home, where he keeps 10,000 books, looked like Christmas – it was festooned with cards. Ordinary people – from nurses to nuns – wanted Norris back in the race. So this stocky, bearded man with a cut-glass accent that seems to hark back to another era decided to try again. "Everybody's been talking about me as the Comeback Kid despite, all the flak," he says. Whether Norris is trying again only to fail again will depend on the forthcoming twists of what must be the most topsy-turvy presidential race on the planet. Born in Leopoldville in what was then the Belgian Congo, where his father was an engineer, Norris was raised in Ireland by his Irish mother. He made his name campaigning for the decriminalization of homosexuality, a brave and lonely battle that began in the 1970s and ended with his victory in the European court in 1988. The Irish law criminalizing homosexuality was finally repealed in 1993. Elected an independent senator in 1987, Norris was the first person to announce his candidacy this year after a Facebook petition urged him to stand. "I don't want to be elected as a gay president. I'm not going to be a gay president. I'm going to be a president who happens to be gay," Norris says when he finally pauses for a cup of earl grey after his day of campaigning. "I was the first person in the world to be elected to a national parliament who happened to be openly gay. I never made a meal out of that because I felt it would be foolish. I also happen to have a beard and be a member of the Church of Ireland. Those are also minorities and are irrelevant, just as my sexuality is irrelevant," he says.
John Taft is a businessman and a Republican, great-grandson to President William Howard Taft and heir to an Ohio Republican dynasty. But it was Gov. Mark Dayton whom he spoke alongside at a recent fundraiser in favour of gay rights and against Minnesota's marriage amendment. What put him on a stage with the Democratic governor? Taft thinks voting to ban gay marriage in the state Constitution would be bad for business. "I'm doing it because I truly do believe that keeping Minnesota competitive depends a great deal on attracting and retaining the best talent the world has to offer," Taft, CEO of RBC Wealth Management U.S., told The Associated Press during an interview in his 19th-floor, downtown Minneapolis office. Opponents of the marriage amendment on the 2012 ballot see natural allies in the state's prominent companies, long seen as integral to preserving the state's fabled quality of life. But the symbolic and financial firepower of companies like Target, General Mills and others with a history of supporting gay causes may not be so forthcoming. The Associated Press contacted representatives for the 13 Minnesota-based Fortune 500 companies that currently offer domestic partner benefits — nearly three-quarters of the state's complete Fortune 500 roster — and only one, a spokeswoman for Little Canada-based medical device maker St. Jude Medical, said the company would publicly oppose the amendment. That's not what amendment opponents might have hoped for. "It's our preference that employers who are committed to fairness and equality for all their employees would find opposing the amendment a reasonable position," said Fred Sainz, vice president of communications and marketing for the Human Rights Campaign, the national gay-rights group that's already engaging in Minnesota's battle. "We do not believe the proposed constitutional amendment is in the best interests of economic and jobs growth in Minnesota," said Rachel Ellingson, vice president for corporate communications at St. Jude Medical. "We believe that it is important for the state to be viewed as inclusive in order to recruit and retain the best talent." The ability to harness corporate wealth into donations will be a key goal of both supporters and opponents of the marriage amendment. With incumbent Sen. Amy Klobuchar so far facing little serious opposition, the campaign could end up as the state's priciest in 2012: after initial predictions of a $10 million campaign, one activist who will be heavily involved with fundraising recently doubled the stakes. "There's an expectation it could be $10 million on each side, $20 million total," said Ann Kaner-Roth, executive director of the gay rights group Project 515. "I think that's not out of the realm of reality." But it won't be with donations directly from Minnesota corporations. Even St. Jude Medical, Ellingson said, would not donate money as a company to defeat the amendment. Of the other 12 companies, representatives for eight told the AP their companies would not take a public position. Those companies are Target, General Mills, Best Buy, Supervalu, Land O'Lakes, Medtronic, Xcel Energy and Ecolab. The other four companies — 3M, Ameriprise Financial, UnitedHealth Group and U.S. Bancorp — did not respond to several inquiries. "Target is committed to an inclusive culture among our team members and throughout the community," spokeswoman Jessica Carlson said. "Target does not have a public position on the proposed amendment, but we are encouraging our team members to exercise the right to vote."
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