Image: Michal Parzuchowski; Forbidden Vancouver
Pride og fordómar: Saga sem læra ber af
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: HISTORY TO LEARN FROM Love. Equality. Pride. These words encompass what comes to mind when observing the annual celebration of loving oneself – Pride. All the while those that walk pridefully are prone to telling a different story. A story of the fight for the right of self-expression and the very right to exist. A story whose tone was set over 50 years ago, in the aftermath of a police raid. The world’s first Pride was organized on June 28th, 1970, commemorating the events from the previous year known as the Stonewall riots. Even though modern-day Iceland proudly places itself at the forefront of the fight for equality, it took five long years before the events from the US ever made waves in Iceland.
Pride and prejudice: History to learn from The Inn-discriminated In the middle of the past century, organized crime hid itself in plain sight by running bars all around New York City. But these were very specific bars that attracted another kind of social outcasts – those whose differences were not easily visible, such as gender, race, or ethnicity, but with rivaling amounts of suffering. Forced to hide their true selves and encouraged to act differently, there weren’t many places that allowed gay people to feel like they belonged. But such was Stonewall Inn which, by the end of the Sixties, became one of New York’s most popular gay bars. At the time, being gay was considered a criminal offense which carried with it other regulations that further exposed the already sensitive community to the whims of the justice system. One such thing happened in the early morning on June 28th, 1969, when under the guise of investigating illegal sales of alcohol, the police raided Stonewall Inn and started arresting offenders. They believed the job was easy as many of the people found on the premises were noted as “cross-dressers,” having been wearing more than 3 articles of gender-inappropriate clothing and, as such, in direct breach of the law. But, by the end of the day, the uprising had started, filled with rage and discontent over the treatment of gay people by many segments of society. It lasted for six days, serving as a catalyst for gay rights movements all around the world, paving the way for more peaceful protests in the future. “Some people call it the interview of the century. It was [published on] the 1st of August 1975 in a magazine called Samuel”, says Hörður Torfason, talking about the day when three short words he uttered began a long-standing change in his life, as well as the life of the whole country. At this point an Icelandic activist and a famous trúbador, Hörður came out, effectively becoming the country’s first openly gay man, which made him a centerpiece toward which most of the hate was being directed. “It really upset the whole society. When I was walking alone along the main street, people were spitting in my face, calling me names and threatening me, back in ‘75, ‘76. Violent people telling me how to behave, think and dress... But I wasn’t scared of them – I challenged those people.” The following years were hard for Hörður, who briefly left the country, struggling with dark thoughts, before realizing he had a bigger role to play in this conversation. He then returned to assume the role of a promoter of gay rights, and used his position to help found Samtökin ‘78, the national queer organization of Iceland. But alas, his career was one of an entertainer, his life a theater. He soon parted ways with the organization and went traveling around Iceland for the next 30 years, performing in many towns and villages to virtually non-existent crowds. People were
