CARNAL NATION

While gays and lesbians in America fight state by state for the right to marry, their counterparts in the Netherlands have had that right for eight years. Liz Farsaci talks to one of the men responsible.

“Gay people must open up their windows, open up their doors and show everyone who they are and how they’re living,” says Henk Krol, a Dutch journalist who led the fight to legalize same-sex marriage in The Netherlands. “You need to invite local leaders over. Show them that you don’t want something strange, you don’t want something extra, you don’t want to put yourself apart—you just want the same thing that other people have. And if you can convince a few people in your own community, if everyone does so, it’s also possible in a big country like America to have the same result as we did in The Netherlands.”

Eight years ago, The Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage, after nearly twenty years of hard work, heartache and political and legal maneuvers. However, the fight here actually began with a phone call from America.

“It all started in 1977, when I got a phone call from a friend in Amsterdam, who had received a phone call from Florida—that was when Anita Bryant was organizing her campaign against gay rights,” says Krol, who is also editor-in-chief of the Gay Krant (Gay News) magazine. “My friend said, ‘I have several friends in America, and they want to hear a protest from The Netherlands against what Anita Bryant is doing. Can you help me?;’”

So, Krol and others organized the Miami Nightmare, a massive concert held in Amsterdam. With the money raised, Krol and others bought two full-page ads, published in Time magazine and in the Miami Herald, stating that those fighting for gay rights in America had the support of people in The Netherlands.

However, they still had money left over, and so they set up the Foundation of Relation Rights (it sounds better in Dutch), whose purpose was to think about how it might be possible to legally organize gay relationships. The Friends of the Gay Krant Foundation was also established, with the aim of advancing gay rights.

Then, in 1985, Krol received a phone call from Jan Wolter Wabeke, who was chief public prosecutor at the time, and knew that Krol was trying to get more rights for gay and lesbian couples. He told Krol that he had been going through the legislation regarding marriage and realized that nowhere in the Dutch statutes did it explicitly specify that a marriage had to be between a man and a woman (even if it was originally intended that way).

Interestingly, marriage is the only legal contract which involves and affects third parties—the tax office, your employer, your health insurance provider, your bank and many other organizations are all involved in the marriage contract that you sign with just one other person.

However, marriage does not only bring rights for couples—it also brings rights for children. “We found that, in The Netherlands, 20,000 children were being raised by lesbian couples,” says Krol. “So these children had parents who were not married, and were therefore second-class citizens. And we always said, it’s not a question of gay rights, it’s a question of human rights, and especially of children’s rights.”

Not everyone within the gay community was interested in marriage—COC, for example, one of the main gay and lesbian groups, would not be fighting for same-sex marriage legislation for another ten years. (By the way, COC stands for Cultuur en Ontspannings-Centrum, or Center for Culture and Leisure, not a capital letter-sized penis!)

Krol explains: “A lot of people said to me, ‘Marriage is so old-fashioned—who wants to get married? Be happy that you cannot marry!’ So I had to explain to them, it’s the same thing with the army: I’m a pacifist, I’m against the army and against war, but I want to be treated equally and I want the possibility to go into the army, and then afterwards I can say, ‘I refuse to go into the army.’ But when you’re not allowed, you cannot refuse. So that was the most difficult part: convincing gay people.”