The Gay Man Iceland Wants to Silence: Inside a "Gender Gilead" - Eldur Smári Kristinsson (#24)

Eldur Smári Kristinsson, chairman of Iceland's Lesbian and Gay Alliance (Samtökin 22), faces repeated criminal prosecution under Iceland's hate speech law for publicly questioning gender-identity doctrine — including criticism of male breastfeeding. A gay rights activist since 2015, he describes a country where kindergarteners ask if they can change sex and a single social media post can trigger a police investigation. His case carries direct relevance for Ireland, where the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Act was signed into law in 2024 amid comparable warnings about speech criminalisation.

Eldur Smári Kristinsson is chairman of Samtökin 22, Iceland's Lesbian and Gay Alliance, and has been a gay rights activist since 2015. In this episode he describes how Iceland — a country of roughly 400,000 people — has, in his assessment, become the most comprehensively captured nation in the world when it comes to gender-identity ideology, and how speaking publicly about that transformation has led to repeated criminal investigations against him personally. His disquiet began with a straightforward question: why were gay men expected to accept sexual partners with male anatomy who identified as women? Asking that question openly earned him his first formal complaint under Iceland's hate speech provisions. Two further criminal cases have followed since. The most recent arose from a social media post criticising the concept of male breastfeeding. He now describes carrying hidden recording equipment whenever he appears in public, saying he does not feel safe without it. The picture he draws of everyday Icelandic life is striking. Kindergarten-age children are coming home and asking parents whether they can change sex, and sex-education content apparently presents BDSM as a sexual orientation alongside more conventional categories. These are not marginal developments, he argues, but reflect a wholesale institutional shift in how gender and sexuality are framed by the state, by schools and by publicly funded organisations. The relevance for Ireland is direct. Ireland passed the Gender Recognition Act in 2015, one of the most permissive self-identification regimes in Europe at the time of its enactment. Proposals to extend legal protections for gender identity have continued since. Separately, Ireland spent several years debating what became the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Act, signed into law in 2024, which creates new criminal offences around incitement to hatred on grounds that include gender and gender expression. Critics argued throughout the legislative process that the provisions were broad enough to chill legitimate speech — precisely the concern Kristinsson's case illustrates in a comparable jurisdiction. What makes his testimony distinctive is its source. He is not a conservative commentator or a religious voice. He is a gay man who spent a decade working in LGBT advocacy, and who argues that the movement he belonged to has been redirected in ways that undermine same-sex attraction as a meaningful or protected category. His presentation at Genspect's Lisbon conference attracted enough attention in Iceland that he subsequently stood as a parliamentary candidate. He continues to speak despite the legal exposure, and his core message is that what is happening in Iceland needs to be seen and understood before similar patterns become entrenched elsewhere.

The dossier behind this episode

Hate speech law, free speech and the gender debate in Ireland

Ireland’s modern argument about hate speech became inseparable from the gender debate because the Government’s proposed reform would have treated “gender” as a protected characteristic in both hate-crime and hate-speech law. The proposal came at a time when public disagreement over sex, gender identity, schools, women’s services, healthcare and language had become increasingly visible.

Read the Irish dossier