No longer tolerant of gays

last updated 8 January 2015

Netherlands

Editorial

The “era of tolerance is over,” said Amsterdam’s Trouw in an editorial. The Netherlands has long prided itself on its progressive example of extending equal rights to homosexuals. Gay couples here can marry, adopt children, and leave each other property as next of kin. But they can no longer walk down the street hand in hand without fear of being attacked. An assault last month on a prominent American gay journalist, Washington Blade editor Chris Crain, was just the most notorious example of an increasing problem—the problem of immigration. While there are “no accurate statistics” on the number of gay-bashing incidents, since police don’t ask victims their sexual orientation, gays themselves say they are being “menaced by Moroccan youths.” The rise of radical Islam among the immigrant populations here, gays say, has fueled a culture of intolerance. “It’s better in Catholic Bavaria than in Rotterdam,” says one gay man. That is a sad comment on Dutch life—and one we never thought we’d hear.