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Apr 21, 2011
The Netherlands celebrated the 10th anniversary of the world’s first legal gay marriage on April 15 with a set of nuptials presided over by the mayor of Amsterdam at the city’s Museum of History.
“I was not in office then, but I remember that as a citizen of the Netherlands, as an Amsterdammer, it made me very proud,” Mayor Eberhart van der Laan told AFP news.
On that occasion in 2001, the Netherlands became the first country to hold a legal same-sex marriage ceremony. Helene Faasen and Anne-Marie Thus walked down the aisle in traditional, flowing wedding gowns alongside three pairs of grooms.
Since then, nearly 15,000 gay and lesbian couples have wed in the nation – about 2 percent of the total number of marriages registered between 2001 and 2010, based on figures from the Central Statistics Bureau.
According to the Amsterdam-based COC, the world’s oldest gay advocacy group, there are about a million LGBT people living in the Netherlands.
Nine other countries – Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland and Argentina – have legalized gay marriage.
– AP
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