On Saturday, August 4, 2007 at 8:49:07 AM UTC-4, Sound of Trumpet wrote:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1875945/posts

Swedish Church to Join Stockholm Gay Pride Parade

AFP ^ | 8/2/07

Posted on 08/03/2007 11:31:06 AM PDT by marshmallow

The Swedish Lutheran Church will march for for the first time in the
Gay Pride parade in Stockholm under the slogan "Love is stronger that everything", the Church announced on Thursday.

"For the first time ever, the parade at the Pride festival will have a delegation from the Swedish Church," it said in a statement.

The parade will go through the streets of the Swedish capital on
Saturday.

The Church said the delegation would include about 30 people including
two deans from the Stockholm and Uppsala cathedrals.

It said it also wanted to "break the masses' big silence" regarding
gays, bisexuals and transexuals.

"The Swedish Church is a Church open to everyone," Uppsala priest Ann-
Katrin Bosbach explained.

Sweden, already a pioneer in giving same-sex couples the right to
adopt children, looks set to allow gays to marry in the Lutheran
Church by introducing a new marriage law in January 2008.

If the so-called "gender neutral" marriage legislation is adopted, the Scandinavian country would become the first in the world to allow gays
to marry within a major Church.

Stockholm Pride is Scandinavia's largest Gay Pride celebration and
last year 45,000 persons participated, according to its organizers.

Homosexuality was not legalized in Sweden until 1944.

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