Married Gay Couple Saved 40 Youths in Oslo Massacre

But lesbians' heroics seems to slipped under the radar
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 2, 2011 2:25 PM CDT
Lesbian Couple Toril Hansen and Hege Dalen Saved 40 Kids in Oslo
A woman touches a Norwegian flag as people gather around thousands of flowers and tributes laid outside the Oslo Cathedral in Oslo in July.   (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

We’ve heard several stories of heroism following the Oslo massacre, but one big story seems to have slipped through the cracks: The story of Toril Hansen and Hege Dalen, who saved 40 teens from Utoya island in their boat. The couple made four trips to save the youths, even though the vessel was hit by bullets following the first one. Some are wondering, writes Tom Chivers in the Telegraph: Did the story stay quiet because Hansen and Dalen are married lesbians?

The only news sources reporting on the story have been “specialist blogs, a Finnish newspaper and thousands of people on Twitter,” Chivers notes. He isn’t sure, however, whether we’re seeing bias at some level in the reporting chain. “Maybe a lesbian couple doesn’t fit the mould of heroic rescuer that we in the media are used to,” he writes. But “more likely that it’s just that, in the panicked days after the attacks, they just never happened to speak to a journalist.” Click for more on BuzzFeed. (More gay marriage stories.)

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