Gay Today: World

Norwegian Bishop Faces Mutiny

By Rex Wockner
International News Report

Norway's only female bishop is in trouble with the priests of her diocese after reinstating a lesbian priest who had been suspended for getting married under Norway's gay partnership law.

Twenty-seven of the 120 ministers in Bishop Rosamarie Koehn's district of the state Lutheran church said March 15 they will no longer seek guidance or spiritual counseling from her and will not allow her to preach in their churches.

Open homosexuals are barred from the ministry in the state church but Koehn disagrees with the policy.

"With the same justification the church has used to change its view in other cases, it must change its view about homosexuality," she said. "There is not a theological basis for excluding clergy from entering a partnership."

Norway is one of four nations where gays and lesbians can marry under special laws that grant nearly every right of matrimony. The others are Denmark (and Greenland), Iceland and Sweden.

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The Netherlands has a special gay-marriage law that grants all the same rights as heterosexual marriage. Hungary has a type of gay common-law marriage that withholds only the right to adoption.