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Top ten loud, proud and gay Swedes

With Stockholm Pride just around the corner, it seems high time to profile some of the country's colourful queers who have proudly come out of the closet.

Published: 23 July 2013 12:44 CEST
Top ten loud, proud and gay Swedes

It has to be said, the nation’s gay and lesbian community have plenty to shout about.

Not only are those who made our top ten an impressive bunch of high achievers but they can also revel in Sweden’s well-respected reputation as a campaigner for HGBT rights.

You could even spot some of them in celebratory mood at the annual week-long Stockholm Pride festival, which runs from July 30th to August 3rd this year.

Among our merry mix you will find an Olympic skier a cabinet minister and a professional football.

IN PICTURES: Top ten loud, proud and gay Swedes

Proud and loud, for the most part, that is.

Keen readers will note that our royal entry never actually admitted to a gay orientation although allegations came to a head, so to speak, in an infamous case of bribery and blackmail labelled the Haijby affair in the 1950s.

Same-sex activity was legalised under his reign in 1944 and he therefore makes the list by default of being one king amongst many queens.

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GAY

Germany to compensate gay soldiers who faced discrimination

Chancellor Angela Merkel's government on Wednesday agreed a draft bill that would compensate gay soldiers who faced discrimination in the armed forces between 1955 and 2000.

Published: 25 November 2020 14:08 CET
Germany to compensate gay soldiers who faced discrimination
A German flag is sewed to the uniform of a Bundeswehr soldier in Dresden. Photo: DPA

Under the proposed law, which needs to be approved by parliament, soldiers
who were convicted by military courts for being gay, demoted or who otherwise
saw their careers damaged because of their sexual orientation, would receive a
“symbolic amount” of €3,000.

“We cannot erase the suffering inflicted upon these people,” Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer told the RND newspaper group. “But we want
to send a signal” and “turn the page on a dark chapter in the history of the
armed forces”, she said.

The compensation would apply to soldiers from the Bundeswehr, which was
created in West Germany in 1955, and to troops from former East Germany's
National People's Army, founded in 1956.

READ ALSO: More Germans identify as LGBT than in rest of Europe

The defence ministry estimates that about 1,000 people would be eligible
for a payout.

Military court judgments against soldiers for engaging in consensual gay sex acts would also be quashed under the draft bill.

It took until 1969 for homosexuality to be decriminalised in West Germany, but discrimination against gay service people continued for much longer, including after Germany was reunified in 1990.

Gay soldiers could expect to be overlooked for promotions or removed from positions of responsibility, with senior officers often deeming them a “security risk” or a bad example to others.

That ended with a law change in 2000 that officially protected gay, lesbian
and bisexual people from discrimination in the armed forces.

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