Oslo Shows the Anti-LGBT Terrorist the Force of Rainbow Power!

As I reported the Oslo Police asked the Pride committee to cancel the Pride Parade on Saturday, as they could not guarantee the safety of the participants after the night to Saturday attack on the London Pub.

I am pretty sure this advice was based on standard policing procedures. What they did not understand, though, was the following:

1. Allowing a terrorist to succeed in cancelling the Pride Parade gave people the impression that the terrorist had succeeded.

2. Cancelling the parade gave LGBTQA-people no place to share their grief, fear and frustrations.

3. By turning this into a security issue, the real problem here — the homophobia and transphobia that led up to the attack — did not get the attention it deserved.

So, on Saturday, thousands of queer people and their friends, marched through Oslo anyway.

Yesterday the Pride organization and the municipality of Oslo arranged a gathering in downtown Oslo, and thousands of people showed up. There was sun. There was rain. And in the end there was even a real rainbow in the sky.

It was a place for healing and a show of strength.

The police recommended that people stay away from this event as well. The people ignored them.

Photos by Michael Arizanti on twitter. He writes that “what’s important is that the people of #Norway don’t bow down to terrorism. If the terrorists manage to silence them and stifle expression, then they have already scored a major victory.”

Video from Astri Elise L’Estrange here.

Originally published at https://trans-express.lgbt.