Hotels in Amsterdam

Five Gay couple marry on a cruise in Amsterdam

For a long time, Netherlands has been a supporter of gay rights. Dutch Parliamentarian Boris Dittrich introduced the country’s first gay marriage bill in 1994, and the Netherlands was the first country to legalize same-sex marriage in April 2001.

In a ceremony performed by city’s mayor Job Cohen this Saturday, Five American-Dutch couples were married in Amsterdam on a cruise in front of an estimated 560,000 enthusiastic spectators. The event was a part of Amsterdam’s Gay Pride Festival and celebrated the 400th anniversary of New York-Amsterdam ties. Cohen called the couples a ‘figurehead’ for that bond. ‘Your transatlantic love is proof of the lasting connection between old and new Amsterdam,’ Cohen said in the service.

All five couples had at least one partner from New York, where a battle over the legalization of gay marriage rages on. Their unions will be recognized as marriages by the state of New York, which respects same-sex marriages performed in locations where they are legal.

Though the polls show that a strong majority of the Dutch population supports gay marriage, Dutch police estimate 70 hate crimes toward gays are reported annually in the city of 750,000. On Friday evening, anti-gay vandals painted “Homos Go to Hell” across a bridge the parade boat was going to cross.

“Hope is all we’ve got,” said New Yorker Patrick Decker, who married his Dutch-born partner at the ceremony.

“For me it’s a message to New York, the most liberal state, the most hip state, to get with it,” said Ira Siff, an opera professional from New York who was about to marry his partner, opera singer Hans Heijnis.