Lesbian Couple's Heroism Overlooked in Coverage On Norwegian Massacre

A married lesbian couple made four daring trips into the midst of a right-wing gunman's kill zone, rescuing 40 youths even as 76 others were murdered during the July 22 rampage that took place on a small island in Norway.

But the mainstream media has virtually ignored the women's heroism, reported a July 30 posting at blog Band of Thebes.

Instead, reports on the attack have focused on whether the defense for the gunman, Anders Breivik, will use an insanity defense. Some American publications have also complained that Breivik has been described as a "fundamentalist Christian," bristling at the suggestion that a member of that faith tradition could murder so many young people in cold blood.

Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly condemned media descriptions of Breivik as a Christian, writing in a July 31 op-ed piece titled "The Anti-Christian Media Strikes Again" that the killer "is not attached to any church, has no history of Christian activity, has openly criticized the Protestant philosophy and has admitted to committing acts counter to all Christian teaching."

O'Reilly singled out a New York Times story in his editorial that called Breivik a "Christian Extremist," and suggested that a pro-gay agenda lay behind the media reports.

"The left well understands that Christian opposition to things such as abortion, gay marriage and drug legalization makes those liberal causes more difficult to achieve," O'Reilly wrote. "Thus, anything that diminishes Christianity is fair game."

However, according to ChristianForumUK.com, "The Norwegian suspect calls himself a 'fundamentalist Christian.' He was also a member of a Swedish neo-Nazi internet forum named Nordisk." The same article reported that the Church of Norway has said that it is "repulsed" by the gunman's claim to Christianity.

A July 30 Christian Post article reported on Bill Maher's reaction to the controversy that rose when the media described Breivik as a "Christian fundamentalist." Maher said on the July 28 edition of "Real Time," his HBO show, "That's what he was. He's a Christian terrorist. He wanted to start a Christian onslaught against the Muslims."

For his part, Breivik stands by his terrorist acts, calling them "necessary" and, therefore, not criminal. In addition to opening fire on a youth camp, Breivik also bombed a government building. He seemingly acted alone. Breivik described himself in Facebook posts and in tweets as a conservative Christian.

But neither O'Reilly nor the New York Times noted that married lesbian couple Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen, upon hearing gunshots and panicked cries from the teens who were under fire, jumped into their boat and headed straight toward the besieged island Ut�ya -- and into the maelstrom of violence that Breivik unleashed on the youth camp located on the small island. The killer, dressed in a police uniform, ranged about the island for nearly an hour and a half, shooting teens that scrambled to run and hide.

Some of the terrorized youths ran into the water. There, they found rescue from Dalen and Hansen who, heedless of the risk to themselves and undeterred by the bullets that struck their craft, made a total of four trips to the island to take panicked and terrorized teens onto their boat.

The British press did notice the story, however, and it was not without a measure of disdain for the American media. The Guardian, a British newspaper, ran an Aug. 3 article on the daring rescue that suggested the reason for the media's negligence was connected with a predisposition to see heroes a male and heterosexual.

Moreover, the article said, a tale of selfless bravery with married lesbians at its heart stood little chance of serious play in the American media despite its dramatic nature. "[Y]ou can just imagine news editors in Washington worrying that, if they pushed the story, they would be accused of promoting 'the gay agenda,' " the article said.

The article took note of former Fox News host Glenn Beck's claim that the youth camp was reminiscent of the Hitler Youth, issuing a not-quite-veiled reference to Beck's much-excoriated remarks.

"American rightwing pundits that came close to saying 'well, we disapprove of Breivik's methods but you have to understand that there is something quite sinister about a summer camp of leftwing youth activists' [were] never going to be happy with lesbian heroism, and married lesbian heroes would just have made their heads explode," the article asserted.

Moreover, the article said, the media's audience, spoon-fed on television drivel, was generally unprepared for any depiction of lesbians that departed from the gender-based stereotypes with which the masses have long been presented.

"We are far more used to lesbian couples, in very special issue-driven episodes, being in danger, and having to be rescued themselves," the article noted acerbically.

"We all need stories about people who put themselves in danger to save lives when bad things are happening; we all need to know that there are people out there who are not ideologically driven killers," the article added. "In particular, gay teens need to be told not just that it gets better, but that they, personally, may one day get the chance to step up, be heroic and make it better."

Though the mainstream press balked, the American GLBT press did notice the tale. In an Aug. 1 article titled, "If a Married Lesbian Couple Saves 40 Teens from the Norway Massacre and No One Writes About it, Did it Really Happen?," blog Talk About Equality offered a translation of a Finnish news account of the women's heroism.

"We were eating," Dalen said in the translated article. "Then shooting and then the awful screaming. We saw how the young people ran in panic into the lake."

The Seattle Lesbian also picked up on the story, posting a July 25 item that linked to news articles in Finnish and German.