After heated debates in the Danish parliament a bill passed June 2012 to allow for homosexual marriage on equal terms with heterosexual couples. However, this body of legislation did not concern civil marriage. In fact, Denmark was the first country in the world to legally allow for civil union of same-sex couples in 1989. It concerned marriage in one specific religious community, the Evangelical Lutheran Church – formally the established church, which constitutionally mandates the state to support it.
From the perspective of this working paper the case represent not only the question of equal rights to get married irrespective of sexual orientation, but also the right of the state to interfere in the internal affairs of the church (i.e. theological questions of dogmatic or liturgical nature). Having a secular parliament passing a bill with effect for only one religious community on a rather controversial topic might seem unheard of in many Western countries. The working paper will investigate how this case can be understood as a particular form of Danish secularism, in which religious freedom, equality and neutrality are interpreted according to a particular national tradition. It is a tradition in which principles of distinguishing religion and politics are deeply connected to the production and reproduction of political identity.
Analyzing the case of same-sex marriage in the Evangelical Lutheran Church, attention will be given to how questions of civic equality and religious equality seemed to have been intertwined: the civic right to get married regardless of sexual orientation spill over into state-church affairs. Thus, the case becomes a question of a right as a Danish citizen to the services of the Danish church, in which the priests are still formally – and in this case also symbolically - state officials.
