Norway's Lutheran Church to celebrate gay weddings

OSLO: Norway's largest religious body, the Lutheran Church, voted by an overwhelming majority on Monday to allow gay marriages in its places of worship, a right enjoyed in only a few other countries.

Eighty-eight of 115 participants at a synod in the western town of Trondheim voted in favor of developing a second wedding service that would enable the Church to marry both same-sex and heterosexual couples.