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Church calls for swear ban after gay sex rant

James Savage
James Savage - [email protected]
Church calls for swear ban after gay sex rant

The Church of Sweden is being asked to introduce football-style penalties for swearing, after a priest used foul language at last year’s meeting of the church’s governing body.

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Dag Sandahl, a priest and opponent of gay marriage, told gay marriage supporting priest Karin Långström Vinge:

“So you think that when you fuck people you should do it up the arse."

Sandahl reportedly made similar comments to another woman at the meeting.

“He wanted to make us aware, in a provocative way, that this wasn’t just a question of marrying homosexuals, but that they also had sex with each other. As if we wouldn’t have understood that otherwise," Långström Vinge, a curate in Skövde, told The Local.

Now Långström Vinge is calling for such language to be banned. In a motion to the church’s general synod, she and fellow delegate Maria Abrahamsson call for those who swear at a church event to face fines:

“It is tempting to compare how language, behaviour and restraint are handled in sport, which seems to have come a lot further than the Synod,” the motion reads.

Långström Vinge told The Local that there was a clear need to clamp down on bad language:

“You might think that it would be natural for people to behave themselves in an ecclesiastical context, but that is clearly not always the case.”

“Schools are far ahead of churches in dealing with bad language like this.”

Dag Sandahl laughed when The Local told him about the motion:

“That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s totally mad. Those words are in the Swedish Academy’s dictionary, so it’s perfectly OK to use them.”

“I could have chosen other words, but these words were justified in the context,” he added.

Sandahl vowed to oppose the motion when it comes up for debate in September:

“These liberals are always such tyrants. They want to rule over us all,” he said.

The Synod will now be asked to vote on the move when it meets in Uppsala at the end of September.

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