| Summary: | The Swedish government ratified on May 1 2009 an amendment of marital law, resulting in same-sex marriage becoming legalized. With the rights of the Christian Swedish state church to officiate weddings originating from the same law, the church was thereby faced with two options: Either officially include same-sex couples in the Christian concept of holy matrimony and keep the right to officiate weddings; or give up the right to officiate weddings altogether. An official decision to accept the terms was reached on October 22 2009, but not without being preceded by an agitated medial debate.This research attempts to analyze the arguments of the debate in three stages: In the first stage the arguments are categorized according to their respective ideological standpoint. In the second stage these categories are examined from post-modern, social constructivist and socialization theory perspectives. Based on this, the third stage sees the arguments analyzed from a viewpoint based in the Copenhagen school concept of securization.The research concludes that the debate does not only simply feature two sides with differences of opinion; but rather that the arguments of the two opposing sides are founded in a common view of the other side as a fundamental threat to ones conception of a sound society.
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