Parking a link: religious freedom in Denmark?

According to this article in the Telegraph (a link from a link from a Drudge link on an unrelated subject), Danish churches are now required by law to perform same-sex marriages.

The linking article presented this as “news” – but the Telegraph article is actually two years old.  And apparently this only applies to the Lutheran Church in Denmark, which is a state church, not, for example, to the Catholic Church in Denmark.

Which means that the my initial impulse, that this is a gross violation of religious freedom, isn’t quite correct.  Essentially, the Danish parliament is the governing body of the Danish Lutheran Church, so they get to make the rules, in the same way as the Pope makes the rules for Catholics via canon law.  

What does it mean to be the State church?  According to Wikipedia, the church is simply called the National Church in Denmark.

According to official statistics from January 2014, 78.4% of Danes are members of the National Church. . . . Fewer than 5% of church members attend services every week, although on Christmas Eve more than a third of the population attend. However, the church is still widely used for traditional family ceremonies including christenings and confirmations. In the year 2008, 41% of weddings and 89% funerals were performed in the National Church, and 71% of adolescents in grade 7–8 were confirmed. According to a 2009 poll, 25 percent of Danes believe Jesus is the son of God, and 18 percent believe he is the saviour of the world.

(As a side note, my guess would be that the “confirmation” has become more of a coming-of-age rite than a close study of religious doctrine and a declaration of one’s belief.  UPDATE:  Here’s a link to a blog that says exactly that.)

Here’s another interesting Wikipedia article, on a Danish National Church priest who publically asserted that he didn’t believe in, well, Christianity, but was, after some church court deliberations, allowed to continue in his job.

In other words, the National Church is more of a state-sponsored community organization than a church, and probably more comparable to the local Senior Center in terms of its legal status and independence.

Which all leads up to, well, nothing.  But it’s interesting, don’t you think?