During an undercover news report broadcast on one of Sweden's
biggest channels, Salvation Army leaders told a covert journalist
working for news programme "Kalla Fakta" (Cold Facts) that he,
being a gay man, could not join the army originally formed in
London in 1865.
Instead, an officer offered to "cure" him through prayer.
The programme also claimed that the Salvation Army was involved in
an agreement with Africa's Malawi Council of Churches, which
comprised of voting for the imprisonment of gay men.
Despite Sweden being the first country in the world to remove
homosexuality as an illness, local SA officers told the journalist
that homosexuality is "fundamentally wrong".
"The Salvation Army's basic position is that homosexual sex is a
sin. The Bible says a man shouldn't sleep with a man in the way he
sleeps with a woman," one chapter leader told the TV4
reporter.
"Anatomically we are not shaped that way, so in that sense I do
think it is wrong," another soldier said.
The Salvation Army now accuses the Swedish TV programme of
infringement.
"There is no revelation, there is no surprise, there is just a
cheap but costly straining after sensationalism," a Salvation Army
spokesperson in Sweden said.
"We interpret the Bible in a way that defines sex as something
that should happen within marriage and as something between a man
and a woman."
The top officer of The Swedish Salvation Army appeared live in the
programme on Sunday, ignoring questions about whether homosexuals
were included in their "all inclusive" policy. She claimed no
knowledge of the MCC agreement.
The Salvation Army was founded by William and Catherine Booth in
London in 1865 and are although describing themselves as
"mainstream protestant" considered to be practising Biblical
literalism.
