Gay one-night stand events lerwick
Community celebrates 'incredible success' of first Shetland Pride festival
Gary Mouat, aged 33, of Lerwick, said that as a gay man who grew up in Shetland he felt it was important to him to help organise Shetland Event as it’s an “issue that’s very close to my heart”.
His role has included organising the team of volunteers needed to make Pride happen.
“When I came out I realised no one really had an issue with it,” he said. “You realise it’s just all this stuff that has built up in your have head.
“I think Shetland in general accepts the homosexual community.”
He said no one should feel they own to announce their sexual orientation.
But he added: “The best thing about me coming out was that I went from existence really worried about what everyone else thinks to ‘I don’t care what people think’.
“I think that not caring and having that feeling of liberation makes the gay people so loved by a lot of different people.”
He said if it hadn’t been for the Covid pandemic the festival may have happened several years earlier and that an event of this scale “is what Shetland has needed”.
“Acceptance, understanding we’re totally getting there in terms of Shetland,” Gary said.
“
Community / Shetland Pride: a celebration of identity but ‘first and foremost a protest’
AS SHETLAND gears up to host its first Celebration event on Saturday, performers and tourists have been arriving to be part of this momentous occasion that is set to hoist the visibility of the LGBTQ+ group in Shetland.
Scotland’s youngest MSP Emma Roddick, representing the Highlands and Islands for the SNP, is expected to create a speech at the event.
She said she was “really excited” to include a role in Shetland Pride, and added: “Queer people exist everywhere, and I know that growing up in a place where the community is less visible can make you touch like you’re all alone or somehow broken.
Roddick highlighted the importance of Shetland Pride for the LGBTQ+ youth. She said: “Young people in Shetland considering coming out or looking to get together other LGBTQ+ folk will, this year, be able to don a rainbow, feel accepted and happy with themselves, maybe for the first time at home.”
Roddick was also appointed the co-convener of the LGBT+ cross party collective in Holyrood.
Drawing attention to the first Pride, she said: “Pride is a protest, and s
Shetland Lives / Shetland Pride trustee Kate Harvey: ‘Pride is important because it makes us visible’
Kate grew up outside Manchester before moving to Shetland five years ago.
“My family is very Homosexual friendly,” she said. “It wasn’t until I was probably in high institution that I actually learned that wasn’t ‘normal’.
“I had family friends that were lesbians and it was totally reveal. In school you’d get the odd comment but it’s not something that someone would be bullied for.”
Due to her open and accepting family, Kate never felt the need to officially come out to them.
“I never had to come out. I was just always out.
“I don’t own a coming out story because it didn’t need to happen.
“Which to me I think, should be everyone’s experience… it’s not something you have to go against expectations [to be straight] because the expectations aren’t there in the first place.”
Despite Kate’s generally positive experiences and living near the divers
Shetland: Finally Home - September 2007
Donna Schofield: how I became myself
Posted: Sunday, 02 September 2007 | 11 comments |
I grew up in the States; on the praries of South Dakota, by the Bad River. I moved there in the early 90's, as a peerie barin. Disappearing Shetland is still one of the most traumatic events I can recall in my life. My cousins were my top friends, and being asked to leave them was like being asked to leave behind my control siblings.
My youth in America was regrettable, if I were the type to have regrets. I never fit into my new school. I recall overhearing some of my new yankee classmatesmake entertainment of the way I talked. Within a not many years, any remnants of a Shetland dialect was destroyed. I tried to adapt, but never made any real friends. By the time I was a teenager, I had plans of running away to Shetland. I did run away from house when I was 16, living with
|