RELATIONS BETWEEN Iceland and the Faroe Islands were under pressure yesterday after several Faroese MPs launched a homophobic attack on Iceland’s head of government.
Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir, the world’s first openly gay prime minister, was on an official courtesy visit to the Faroe Islands to try to boost political and cultural ties between the neighbouring territories.
But the visit was marred by a snub by Jenis av Rana, an MP and leader of Midflokkurin, a fundamentalist Christian party, who refused an invitation to a state dinner in Tórshavn, the Faroese capital, because Ms Sigurdadóttir was accompanied by her wife.
Mr av Rana said the presence of Jónina Leósdóttir at the state dinner was “a provocation”. Long-time partners Ms Sigurdardóttir and Ms Leósdóttir were married in their native Reykjavik in June this year on the same day a new law making Iceland the 10th country in the world allowing full same-sex marriages took effect.
Mr av Rana, who is also a general practitioner and a preacher, pointed out that his political party is formally opposed to homosexuality.
“Were I to participate in the official dinner, it would be the same as saying that I support a union that is contrary to nature and condemned by the Bible. And that’s something I will not risk under any circumstances,” he said.
Mr av Rana’s traditionalist views were echoed by parliamentarians in other parties. Gerhard Lognberg, a social democrat, said that while he was not invited to the dinner he was unsure if he would have attended had the offer been made.
Accepting the dinner invitation, he said, was tantamount to accepting gay marriages.
Alfred Olsen, of Sambandsflokkurin, a liberal party, said he objected to the presence of a same-sex spouse.
“It is against nature for a man or a woman to live with a person of the same sex,” he said.
Though not themselves in cabinet, Mr Lognberg and Mr Olsen are MPs for parties which are part of the three-party coalition government.
Kaj Leo Johannesen, the Faroese prime minister, condemned the anti-gay outbursts, saying Mr av Rana should be “ashamed of himself”.
Opposition leader Høgni Hoydal, a former deputy prime minister, told The Irish Timesin an interview that he too was "ashamed of the MPs' behaviour".
Ms Sigurdardóttir and her wife “were representing the whole Icelandic nation” and snubbing them was utterly unacceptable, he said.
Although Mr Hoydal claimed that only a small minority of the 48,000 Faroese inhabitants are homophobic, he also feared that the incident would damage the islands’ international image.
“It was an insult to the Icelanders and to every homosexual person in the world,” he said.
The Faroe Islands are a semi-autonomous territory under the Danish crown but they are markedly more socially conservative than other Nordic countries.
In 1989, Denmark became the first country in the world to permit registered partnerships for gay and lesbian couples and today, Norway, Sweden and Iceland all allow same-sex marriage.
Gay and lesbian unions are not recognised in the Faroes and gay couples are banned from adopting children.
Sexual orientation was written into the islands’ anti-discrimination law as recently as 2006, and even then only by a narrow margin after a bitter political debate.
There are no statistics on the number of gay people living in the Faroe Islands.
However, anecdotal evidence suggests that a large proportion of the gay community chooses emigration to Denmark over a hostile home environment.