There is no 'gay' marriage in the Netherlands

By Gwen on Thursday, October 8, 2009 - 13:44

For the past two years, a lot of progress has been made on the front of gay marriage in the United States. Before that, I didn't follow any gay news because I was probably going through denial. But even if I had, I was a month away from becoming ten when four same-sex couples were married by the mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, in 2001. It's safe to say I can't remember the Netherlands ever having no gay marriage.

But then again, that is true. We don't have gay marriage. What they did to enable us to get married, was change the previous civil marriage law and simply open it up for same-sex couples. The process of changing this started back in 1985, when a few people got together with the existing marriage law and found it didn't say the spouses had to be of opposite sexes. A lovely loophole, but not everyone thought so, apparently. The gay rights organization COC, who had been contacted by the chief editor of the Gay Krant, didn't want to become involved in the issue.

In the years after that, the Friends of the Gay Krant Foundation found a male couple who wanted to get married, and tried to find a city that would agree to do so. The couple officially moved to another city to make this happen, but to no avail. In 1991, symbolic registers were opened for same-sex couples to let the government know there was a need for same-sex marriage and enough support in society. One of the opponents in government was Minister of Justice Hirsch Ballin, also minister of Justice in the current cabinet. I'm suddenly reminded of his plans in October of last year to ban people from adopting children from the US, which is one of the few countries that allow gay people to adopt.

It was five years after the registers were opened, in 1996, that the cabinet decided it would let a commission investigate opening up civil marriage. By now the COC had come around, and had decided although traditional marriage was not perfect, it was the best option. Meanwhile, the government continued working on registered partnerships, although in a survey conducted in 1997, 45% of gay and lesbian respondents had said they would wait for civil marriage to be opened up before they would get married. The civil unions became a reality on January 1^st, 1998, when three couples got married of which one partner was seriously ill. Terminal illnesses are of course always examples of how important it is to have the right to marriage (or something like it, like civil unions).

Henk Krol

In 1999, the Council of State advised the cabinet not to pass the law, because if they did, the Netherlands would be too much out of line with the rest of the world. They obviously forgot that if not for people to step forward and be brave, things never change. Prime Minister Kok and then Junior Minister Job Cohen decided against the Council of State’s advice. Later that year, Queen Beatrix knighted founder and Chief Editor of the Gay Krant Henk Krol, the initiator of the legislation process, in the Order of Oranje Nassau for what he had done for gay emancipation.