Just one week after the United States saw its first African-American president sworn in, Iceland elected its first female prime minister, and the world’s first openly gay head of government. Social Democrat Johanna Sigurdardottir took over as PM at the end of last month, after Geir Haarde resigned in response to the country’s crippling economic crisis.
Having studied commerce, Sigurdardottir later worked as a flight attendant, trade union organiser and office worker, before being elected to parliament in 1978. After unsuccessfully standing for SDP leadership, she formed her own party, the National Movement. The party later merged with the Social Democrats and two other centre-left groups to form the Alliance, which finally came into power in coalition with Haarde’s Independence Party in 2007.
Now Iceland’s longest serving MP, it is perhaps her defiance as much as her outstanding contribution to politics that has cemented her popularity amongst the Icelandic population.
I heard the news of Sigurdardottir’s appointment having just seen the new Gus Van Sant film, Milk. Sean Penn plays Harvey Milk, California’s first openly gay elected official. Milk first made a name for himself as a gay activist in San Francisco’s Castro district. After several elections and losses for both city and state assembly seats, he became the first openly gay man in the United States to be elected to political office when he won a city supervisor seat in 1977. Milk served only 11 months in office before his life was cut tragically short when he and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor.
Regardless of his relatively short career in politics, Harvey Milk has become something of an icon and ‘a martyr for gay rights’. The film was released in the US just weeks after Proposition 8 was passed in the November 2008 general election. It changed the state Constitution ‘to restrict the definition of marriage to opposite-sex couples and eliminated same-sex couples’ right to marry.’ Some claim that if the film had been released just slightly earlier, a similarly successful battle could have been fought in favour of the gay community.
Whilst America may still have some progress to make, President Obama has been unambiguous in his support of civil partnerships and gay equality and has made it clear that legal rights for gays should be conferred by the state, not by the church. Change will come, but not overnight. As Sigurdardottir announced defiantly, in a speech accepting defeat in the mid-1990s, ‘[my] time will come’.
