Let’s Not Go Dutch

Sure enough, four model couples were found: six gay men and two lesbians, including a nurse and a publisher, a social worker and a notary with a baby. According to the Washington Post, each of the couples agreed to “a pre-marriage news conference with city officials and a party afterward at an Amsterdam gay disco.”

As midnight, March 31, neared, Amsterdam’s town hall was ready to roll. The city council chamber was packed with family, friends, international correspondents, onlookers, activists, and public officials. The chamber was bedecked with red and pink roses. In the foyer, pink champagne and a shocking pink cake decorated with six grooms and two brides awaited the newlyweds. A few protesters stood outside.

Job Cohen, mayor of Amsterdam, is a man with a knack for being where the action is. Less than two years ago, he was the Dutch minister of justice who drafted the “opening-up of marriage” law. In his new role as mayor, he would be the first to implement it.

As the clock struck midnight, the ceremony began. Agence France Presse reported that the six men were “sporting either jackets or leather vests,” while the two women were “dressed in traditional wedding gowns.” The four couples held hands and exchanged vows. The mayor, officiating, offered a few words: “There are two reasons to rejoice. You are celebrating your marriage, and you are also celebrating your right to be married.” He added, “A page in the history books has been written. You love one another, and you can now get married. What is more normal than that?”

Then the mayor banged his gavel and declared, “I pronounce you united in the bonds of marriage,” and the couples kissed and embraced, to warm applause. They exchanged rings and headed for the pink champagne, the interviews, and the disco club.

Henk Krol was ecstatic. “This is something unique that we have in the Netherlands,” he told Agence France Presse. “It’s nice to see it’s becoming a good export product.”

Gay marriages, writes Gordon Cramb at the London Financial Times, are “another notch for the Netherlands — the country of decriminalized cannabis, brothels and euthanasia — in its record as a society of personal freedom.” But this way of putting it gives the impression that the Dutch are a bunch of wild individualists. In fact, they are remarkably conformist.

This paradoxical quality of Dutch society has long been noted. The Netherlands is the most densely populated country in Europe, and it has always been under pressure, sometimes from invaders, often from the sea. In such circumstances, every neighbor is a member of the team, regardless of his beliefs. What he does on his own time is his own business, so long as he also does his social duty: works hard and is a decent neighbor and citizen.

Because of its location and history, the Netherlands has often been a place of refuge for religious dissenters, including the Pilgrims before they set sail for America and the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. But this is not because the Dutch are “tolerant” in the washed-out sense we think of today. Dutch politics, which has strong Calvinist roots, has always had a moralistic quality. It’s just that pluralism is part of what the Dutch are moralistic about.

Prior to the 1960s, Dutch society was deeply divided and passionately pluralistic. The Calvinists, Catholics, Liberals, and Socialists were ideological opponents, and ran their own schools, media, youth leagues, and so on. Yet their politics always presupposed coexistence, both as a matter of fact and as a matter of principle.

Not surprisingly, then, the Calvinist-Catholic coalition that governed the Netherlands for most of the twentieth century — known since 1980 as the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) — was reluctant to regulate homosexual behavior. Although the official policy was one of disapproval, in practice the government treated homosexual behavior as better left to private and social judgment than to legal regulation. Each community could decide for itself how to respond. While this looked to the outsider like laxity, it was in some cases morally severe.

The 1960s changed all this, as they changed so much in many countries. The cultural wave glorifying personal autonomy broke down many of the traditional ideological divides and began to create a Dutch politics in which differences of belief were increasingly muted. Although the CDA continued to govern Holland until 1994, it suffered many political fractures, and its leaders adopted many positions typical of European social democracy.

One of these was support for Registered Partnerships, a new legal status for couples, regardless of sex, that would include many of the benefits of marriage. CDA intellectuals used the slogan “1 + 1 = Samen” (1 + 1 = Relationship) to affirm that relationships, which everybody needs, are good and should be encouraged by the law, while sexuality should be regarded as private. Most of the CDA also supported the 1992 Equal Treatment Law, which added “sexual orientation” to the list of categories to be monitored by a national Equal Treatment Commission.

By 1994, the CDA was politically exhausted, and encountered the first of several stinging defeats at the polls. A new government of Socialists and Liberals took power, and same-sex “marriage” was part of its electoral program. In short order, the majority in Parliament was calling on the government to introduce a bill. A commission was created which recommended the legalization of same-sex “marriage.” In 1998, Parliament passed a Registered Partnership law with overwhelming support, but the proponents of same-sex “marriage” still weren’t satisfied.

When new elections were held, the share of seats won by the CDA and the smaller Christian parties dwindled further. On July 8, 1999, Minister of Justice Cohen introduced two bills, to legalize same-sex marriage and allow the adoption of children by same-sex couples. At hearings in the fall, protests by members of Parliament, the Dutch Catholic Bishops, and others went unheeded, and the bills were sent forward.

In September 2000, the lower chamber of Parliament held three days of debate. Most CDA members protested that they had supported Registered Partnerships, but this was going too far. Several openly gay CDA members, however, spoke eloquently of their struggles and announced their support for the marriage bill. Other members from the smaller Christian parties declared that they had voted against Registered Partnerships precisely to forestall this end.

On September 12, the lower chamber passed the marriage bill by the huge margin of 107-33, and on December 19, after several days of debate, the upper chamber passed it 49-26. As the press noted, only “religious parties” opposed it.

So what does the word “marriage” mean in the Netherlands now? It would appear to be the most highly regulated of several forms of intimate partnership available under Dutch law. The two others, which carry fewer benefits and regulations, are Registered Partnerships and Cohabitation Contracts. In addition, of course, one can always carry on a relationship without any legal sanction. So the Dutch have created a kind of sliding scale for relationships, in which the distinction between marital and non-marital unions — fundamental to the law of every other country — has been blurred. Not surprisingly, some Dutch legal scholars have suggested that “family law” should be re-christened “relationship law.”

Another way of putting it is that the official position of the Netherlands is now that sex differences are legally irrelevant when it comes to marriage and children. And no institution in Dutch society except houses of worship (narrowly understood) can act on the belief that sex differences are relevant to marriage and children. For to act on such beliefs would be to engage in a discriminatory practice. In this way, what began as a policy of “tolerance” and “inclusion” ends up marginalizing dissenters.

But, so what? Who cares if the Dutch legalize same-sex marriage, decriminalize pot, legalize and unionize prostitution, or legalize euthanasia? In their typically moral-extremist way, the Dutch feel they are setting a great example for the world. Why not leave them to their illusions and future disappointments?

Well, because marriage is different. It’s portable. Only one of two same-sex spouses has to be a Dutch citizen or resident national in order for the couple to marry in Holland. Indeed, one of the men married on April 1 is a German. A recent article from the Australian reports that two men are on their way to Holland to marry. One is Australian, the other has dual citizenship. They will return home to Australia and demand recognition for their marriage.

There are undoubtedly American same-sex couples who will get married in the Netherlands. For that matter, challenges to Canada’s federal marriage statute are moving forward, and if the Supreme Court of Canada strikes down that law, Americans will be able to avoid a transatlantic flight and just drive over the border to get married.

When they return, they will seek recognition of their marriages. Somebody will have to decide whether to give it to them. Will it be their employer? A sympathetic town clerk? A city council that endorses same-sex marriage? An attorney general who decides not to contest the decision of such a clerk or council? Recognition could happen almost imperceptibly, without ever becoming a public issue. Or it might become a very hot public issue, accompanied by political turmoil.

It’s true that 34 states and the U.S. Congress have passed Defense of Marriage acts or constitutional amendments designed to bar same-sex marriage. Presumably in these states, struggles for recognition of same-sex marriages will end up in litigation; groups like the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the ACLU Lesbian and Gay Rights projects will see to that. Sooner or later, one of these cases will reach the U.S. Supreme Court, where five justices could take it upon themselves to legally redefine marriage for America.

Whatever one thinks of same-sex marriage, at least the Dutch have chosen it for themselves, through their normal democratic process. It would be doubly unfortunate if that same policy were forced on unwilling Americans by their courts.

David Orgon Coolidge is director of the Marriage Law Project, based in Washington, D.C.