As Mario wrote about Frank Kameny earlier this week, another gay right’s pioneer has passed away at age 96. Similarly, I knew nothing of the man who laid the track for marriage equality and civil rights for our community across the globe. A founding member of Europe’s oldest queer organization, LGBT Danmark, which started it’s crusade in 1948!

On Oct. 1, 1989, he and his partner Eigil were among 11 couples to exchange vows as Denmark became the first country to allow gays to enter civil unions, with nearly the same rights as heterosexual couples. Eigil Axgil died in 1995.

In the 1950s, both were sentenced on pornography charges to short prison terms for running a gay modeling agency that issued pictures of naked men. The men melded their first names into a new surname, Axgil, and used it in a public show of defiance.

Vivi Jelstrup, a spokeswoman for LGBA Danmark, said Axgil in many ways personified the struggle for gay rights in Denmark.

“But Axel Axgil was a modest man who never cast himself as a lonely warrior,” Jelstrup said. “He always underscored that there were many involved in the work and that it was a common cause.”

May you rest in peace.

Via: Huffingtonpost