Äktenskap för par med samma kön Vigselfrågor - Regeringen

SOU 2007:17 Summary
sitional purposes for a period of one year. Moreover, the provisions
contained in ÄktB referring to the internal rules of the Church of
Sweden should be reworded to more accurately express the
position of the Church of Sweden as being on a par with other
religious communities as regards wedding ceremonies.
I also propose that a new provision be included in ÄktB by
which it is indicated that religious communities are entitled to
impose a charge for performing religious ceremonies and that the
provision on appeals against decisions about performing wedding
ceremonies made by a priest of the Church of Sweden be repealed.
The obligation of religious communities’ wedding officials or
the community to perform wedding ceremonies
On the basis of a religious wedding ceremony being a religious
service, there is reason to question whether an obligation to marry
two women or two men would violate the freedom of religion in
those cases where the religion prohibits marriage between two
persons who are of the same sex. In any event, such an obligation
crosscuts the area of freedom of religion. It is not reasonable to
require that a religious community should conduct wedding
services that are alien to its beliefs. Moreover, an obligation to
conduct wedding ceremonies would in practice also provide anyone
with an unconditional right to the religious ceremony, as the
religious component cannot be separated from the legal component.
Another factor is that it would not be reasonable to limit the
obligation to conduct wedding ceremonies so that it generally
relates to couples of the same sex. A general obligation to conduct
wedding ceremonies would go too far even if it were limited to
relate to the members of the respective religious communities. A
wedding ceremony official can in fact also refuse to marry a couple
for reasons other than they being of the same sex. The statutory
text would therefore need to specify when the obligation to
conduct a wedding ceremony does not apply. Such a regulation
would probably result in a considerable number of exceptions. In
practice it would also be difficult to determine what reasons
underlie a refusal to perform a wedding ceremony. If requirements
are imposed on religious communities’ wedding ceremony officials
to marry couples of the same sex, there is also significant risk that
most religious communities would no longer wish to retain their
43