Copenhagen hosted the WorldPride festival (DK) last month. The rainbow flag and colors were on display everywhere. The final collective parade was canceled because of Covid, but there were six smaller parades that met in Fælledparken, the city’s largest park. The Nørrebro Pride section attracted special attention because of the strict entrance requirements for its opening party: No whites or heterosexuals allowed; nobody with a hairstyle stolen from another culture either. About the policy, which sported a new acronym – QTIBIPOC – one puzzled observer asked, “Isn’t it illegal to exclude people on the basis of their sexuality and skin color?” Lars Henriksen, spokesperson for the official Copenhagen Pride, thought the policy was “super positive… It’s brilliant that some separatist spaces are created…. Some people feel insecure in what we’re doing.”

Nørrebro Pride: Photo: Ólafur Steinar Rye Gestsson © Ritzau Scanpix.

Global citizen or authoritarian fellow traveler?

After winning the Olympic gold medal in badminton in a convincing drubbing of defending champion Yu Qi Shi, Viktor Axelsen broke into delirious tears of joy, prompting journalists and social media commentators to wax rhapsodic about the sight of a man crying in public. A couple of weeks later, Axelsen decided to move to Dubai (DK) because of its better training conditions. The Danish badminton organization was disappointed, and others note that the oil states like to use Western athletes for PR and asked Axelsen whether the Emirate’s Sharia legal system bothered him. He acknowledged the “shitstorm,” maintaining that he’s become less concerned with what people outside his inner circle think of him.

Did you take communion from this guy?

Denmark isn’t immune from the grisly sort of domestic terror that graces Anglo tabloids. “A Danish parish priest confesses to murdering wife and dissolving body in acid,” reports The Local. Inspired by an episode of Breaking Bad, Thomas Gotthard attempted to get rid of his wife’s body in a feed barrel at an abandoned country estate. The barrel was too heavy to move, so he divided its contents into two smaller barrels, buried them, dug them up again, chopped the body into smaller pieces, and burned them. The police found hydrochloric acid and caustic soda in Gotthard’s house, along with suspicious google searches on his computer. “I have sent my life out into the darkness where I want to stay,” he said. “No one should feel sorry for me.”

Family values gone wrong

The Danish Supreme Court sustained a ban on the criminal gang Loyal to Familia (DK). The Court concurred that the gang was a citizens’ association and that its ordinary activities included the commission of wide-ranging and serious criminality. Citizens’ associations (foreninger), which are very common in Denmark, are protected by the Constitution. This was the first case against an association in almost 100 years and the first time a criminal gang has been declared illegal. LTF, which arose in the Nørrebro district in Copenhagen, was banned by the police in 2017 after a series of shootings, and there are still estimated to be around 100 members in its seven chapters in the country. The police do not expect the gang to suddenly stop its business but are encouraged that they have greater opportunities to prosecute its members. Prosecutors were encouraged to bring similar cases against other criminal gangs.