The former head of the Norwegian police emergency squad, Torleiv Vika, in Oslo, Norway, apologise for how the police treated gays.
In the old Grønland police station (F) also called Bekkegata, we had a car patrol with the call sign 141 in the 60s, Vika writes in a post on Politi Forum‘s website. When we got the order to drive down to the urinal’s at Grünerløkka or Ankertorget to remove the accumulation of men, we knew that there were gays who had been there. We certainly might have come with to slurs that today is consider as homophobic slurs.
Nor could we imagine that there were any police officers who at that time was gay, but it probably was.
Homosexuals could then i Norway, and until 1972, be punished with imprisonment for up to one year to be practicing homosexuality.
All these memories have been there all the time Vika writes, but were reinforced by his nephew John-Erik Vika being wedded to Kjell-Jostein in Eidsvoll church by bishop Atle Sommerfeldt in Borg. John-Erik Vika is a police officer, but currently the chairman of the municipality of Eidsvoll.
Torleiv Vika, ends his post like this :
It is a long way from the dark urinals at Grünerløkka and the Ankertorget to the light and the warmth that met you in the church at Eidsvoll. All I can say in this context is “sorry” – and remembering words that the bishop said during the wedding ceremony: “Love is the greatest.”
Photo by Benson Kua [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons