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Friday, March 29, 2024

Christian Democrats back in the closet

Norway’s Christian Democrats party (Kristelig Folkeparti, KrF) has tucked itself back into the closet, after a short-lived attempt by some party members to ease its stand on gay marriage.

Even some top party leaders, among them Dagrun Eriksen, were behind the proposal to back a new, neutral law that would regulate all domestic relationships. It should still be up to various religious congregations, they said, to decide whether they’d marry persons of the same sex. Homosexuals, though, would also have the right to secure a legal framework for their domestic relationships, and the proposal from the party’s program committee would remove a phrase in the party program that “marriage shall be an arrangement between a man and a woman.”

The proposal that made headlines in Norway last week was quickly dashed, though, because not all party officials were made aware of it before it went public. The head of KrF, Knut Arild Hareide, wasn’t pleased and the party’s so-called “Bible-belt” constituency was quite upset.

Hareide told newspaper VG, for example, that KrF “still looks at marriage as an arrangement between a man and a woman.” He effectively killed any debate before it really began by killing the proposal itself. Eriksen had no immediate comment.

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