21/05/2021
The Shetland Islands are probably to see their first independent Pride event in the June of 2022, according to a report on the BBC News Channel. A committee is already being put together, and they hope for several hundred people to attend. Shetland has already seen the rainbow flag fly above the town hall in the principal town, Lerwick. In addition, a local group known as LGBTQ Shetland has had well received floats in the islands' annual carnival event. "Shetland's an open, inclusive, and tolerant society. This will be quite a spectacle next summer if it goes ahead as planned," said council convener Malcolm Bell. Activists noted that Scotland decriminalised male homosexuality in 1980, some thirteen years after England and Wales had done so, and said that work still needed to be done. Although major strides towards LGBTQ equality were being made by the mainstream parties within Scottish politics, recent elections had seen Christian fundamentalist candidates spreading outright lies that gay groups wanted to reduce the age of consent to ten. In one case, a fringe candidate for the anti-gay Family Party was exposed by Pink News as being a former “gay-for-pay” porn star. The Shetland Islands are around one hundred miles north east of mainland Scotland and some two hundred miles west of Norway. There is a historic link with both ancient Scottish kingdoms and the Scandinavian world.
