Straight Men Are Suddenly Holding Hands For A Beautiful Reason
What a heartwarming mission.
By Curtis M. Wong
LEX VAN LIESHOUT via Getty Images
Dutch leader of the Democrats 66 (D66) party Alexander Pechtold (L) and Financial specialist of D66 party Wouter Koolmees (R) held hands as a sign of solidarity for two gay men who were allegedly attacked in Arnhem.
Scores of men are responding to an alleged attack on a gay couple in the Netherlands... by holding hands.
Jasper Vernes-Sewratan and his husband, Ronnie Sewratan-Vernes, were reportedly attacked early Sunday by a group of six to eight teenage boys, RTL Nieuws reports. The men said they were returning to their Arnhem home hand-in-hand from a party at the time of the attack.
The incident sent shockwaves through the Netherlands’s LGBTQ community, and was reportedly condemned by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. But two of the country’s other lawmakers went a step further, showing solidarity for the couple by holding hands as they arrived at a government meeting Monday.
Read More:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/netherlands-men-holding-hands_us_58e3c151e4b0f4a923b24fd5?lg4jocnf0w9udi&
Solidarity and the Power of Humanity. This is good to see.
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Thank you so much for the video, Amaryllis. Sweet~
It's more like 3 steps forward, 2 back. So there is some progress.
About 15 years ago my country (Germany) introduced civil unions, which basically meant "all the obligations of marriage but no rights usually connected to marriage". And that law was introduced by a coalition of the left-wing party and the green-left party, so even they didn't really support "equal rights". Conservative parties, including today's Merkel party, were screaming and threatening about christian values and going to hell.
Now fast forward to today, the German supreme court has slowly added most of the positive aspects you enjoy in a marriage to civil unions. The main difference is that you can't adopt kids as a gay couple, and the name is different ("Eingetragene Lebenspartnerschaft" sounds bad compared to simple "Ehe"
.
So lots of progress has been made on the legal front. Right now, the main left-wing party fights for the "Ehe für alle", i.e. opening marriage to same-sex couples. Merkel is, of course, opposed. She's in the christian party after all. But even parts of her party support the "Ehe für alle".
Meanwhile, 83% of Germans support gay marriage, including adoption rights, in Germany. So that's a hell of a lot of progress compared to 2006 when I came out to my parents.
Of course, it's not universal. While the US and most of Europe is moving in the right direction, a few European countries, Russia and parts of Africa are not. I'm not sure about China and other Asian countries.
