Bent Høie (born 1971)

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Høie was elected to the Norwegian Parliament for Rogaland Høyre from 2000 to 2021, and served as the party’s Second Deputy Leader from 2010 to 2020. He is married to Dag Terje Solvang.

In our interview with the then Minister of Health, he shares stories from his life and his upbringing in Randaberg, just outside Stavanger. It wasn’t until his mid-twenties that he told others he was gay. Since then, he has been open—also in politics. Høie has used his position as minister to influence changes such as self-determined legal gender and access to PrEP treatment.

An excerpt from the interview is available in the window below, where Høie talks about entering into a registered partnership at the same time he was elected to the Norwegian Parliament for the first time. He was the second person—after Anders Hornslien—to be elected to Parliament while in a same-sex partnership. This attracted some attention, but Høie had decided not to be defined solely as a “gay politician.”

The full interview is available at the Queer Archive (Skeivt arkiv), part of the Special Collections at the University Library of Bergen.

The Queer Archive met Bent Høie in Oslo, January 2018.