For years, a rumor has circulated claiming that, in 1979, Swedes called in sick to work for being gay or lesbian in order to protest the country's health system's classification of homosexuality as a mental illness.
For example, a June 25, 2025, post on Instagram relayed the claim (archived):
As of this writing, the post had gained 240,895 likes. But it was not the first time the claim appeared on social media. In June 2020, a post appeared on Reddit relaying the rumor, citing a 2015 article by Mental Floss.
Older articles relayed the claim, as well. For example, Slate published a story in 2013 claiming one person who had called in sick had in fact received a sickness-benefit payout. Slate cited a page by the RFSL — the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights — which had disappeared at the time of this writing, though Snopes was able to find an archive of it.
According to a translation of this archived page, the idea to call in sick for being homosexual was part of a 1979 protest action led by the RFSL. While homosexuality had been legal in Sweden since 1944, the National Board of Health and Welfare still classified homosexuality as a mental illness. Following several vain efforts to change this classification, the RFSL asked those who would join the protest to use Liberation Week in August 1979 (the week that would later become Stockholm Pride) to either join a sit-in at the National Board of Health and Welfare or, if they could not or would not attend, to call in sick to their jobs for being gay.
Several people did so, and one woman from Småland even obtained a sick-benefit payout for "calling in gay," according to the RFSL archived page.
The calls, which were part of a larger protest that culminated in the Aug. 29, 1979, sit-in at the National Board of Health and Welfare, resulted in homosexuality being removed from the list of illnesses on Oct. 19, 1979, the page said.
Snopes contacted the RFSL to ask why the page was taken down and we will update this report if they respond.
A 2022 academic article, titled, "I Felt a Little Homosexual Today, So I Called in Sick: The Formation of 'Reverse Discourse' by Swedish Gay Activists in the 1970s," published in the scholarly journal Global Society, also recounted the events. Written by Mikael Baaz, professor of international law and political science, and Mona Lilja, professor of peace and development research, both at the University of Gothenburg, the article cited interviews the authors conducted with several people who took part in that event, including Barbro Westerholm, who had been recently named director of the National Board of Health and Welfare in 1979 and who eventually obtained the declassification of homosexuality as an illness.
In the article, the authors also relied on interviews that some people who had called in sick had given to Swedish media. For example, they cited one participant who had obtained the benefit payout, talking in 2009 to Sveriges Radio:
It would have been great to be a part of it [the sit-in] … and hang out with my friends and do something visible. I also thought ok, I cannot [go to Stockholm]. It's 40 miles to go there. And you cannot go up for such a thing and also, I worked, so it was hard to just leave. I think it was in the middle of the week too. But I thought I could contribute by calling in sick … This very week, everyone would call in sick so that it would have an effect … If 500 call in the same week for a sexuality disorder, it is effective. So, I called one Sunday night and I entered the code for this: 302.0 or whatever it was. Imagine that I still remember it. After I called in sick, I did not reflect upon it further. Nothing happened until September or October when I got the pay-out.
Snopes contacted Baaz and Lilja seeking more context about the research they conducted on this 1979 protest. We will update this report should they respond.
Given corroborating articles from reputable organizations citing the same events in the same time frame — and including first-person interviews with actual participants in the protest — we have thus rated this claim as true.