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Legislative amendments have been instrumental in gay emancipation
Political scientist and European politician Joke Swiebel, who once graduated from the UvA a long time ago, is back. Now as a PhD student. This week she will receive her doctorate for a study of Dutch gay politics over the past 60 years.
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One of the important moments in the post-war gay movement is undoubtedly the first gay demonstration in the Netherlands (and even in Europe), which took place exactly fifty-five years ago this month in the Binnenhof. The main demand of the demonstrators then was the abolition of the 1911 article 248bis of the penal code that prohibited sexual acts between adults and minors of the same sex, a prohibition that did not apply to heterosexuals. Lesbian student Joke Swiebel attended this “peaceful demonstration of gay people,” as reported by newspaper De Telegraaf. The demonstration of “the nearly 100 cheerful gays” was successful: the contested article of the law was scrapped two years later.
But with that, the struggle for equal gay rights was far from over. In fact, the battle only really began then, according to the doctoral thesis Homopolitics in the Netherlands 1966-2023 (in Dutch: Homopolitiek in Nederland 1966-2023), which the now 82-year-old Swiebel - who previously worked at the UvA, in various departments and was a member of the European Parliament on behalf of the Dutch labour party PvdA - is defending this week at the UvA. The time period she chose for her research shows that the 1969 demonstration apparently had a three-year run-up and that the struggle would continue for nearly sixty years thereafter. And for enough gays - a term we hardly hear anymore in the LGBT+ era - the battle is still not over, even for an octogenarian, who is connecting the dots of her combative political life with this PhD.
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Four legislative changes
Unlike what might be expected of a political scientist, Swiebel chooses a legal perspective. In her dissertation, she discusses four legislative amendments, all of which have been of great importance in the emancipation of homosexuals. She describes and analyzes the social and legislative process, follows the parliamentary debates that preceded it and the passage of legislative amendments. These are benchmarks, linked to four years in which important legislative changes took place in favor of gay emancipation. In doing so, Swiebel examines not only the politico-legal aspects of the legislative changes, but also whether and, if so, what symbolic value each of those legislative changes had. Not for nothing does her dissertation have the subtitle “the symbolic power of legislation,” suggesting that the symbolism surrounding it is at least as important as the legislative amendments themselves.
Meeting
It seems logical that Swiebel begins her research in 1966—and not 1969. As mentioned above, there was a run-up to the 1969 demonstration, and Swiebel follows that run-up beginning in 1966. It is October of that year that the issue of Article 248bis reached the agenda of the House of Representatives, thus formally becoming a topic of discussion in the House. This fact is not altered by the collapse of the Cals cabinet precisely that month, which prevented the meeting from ultimately taking place. The following year, the agenda item on whether or not to maintain article 248bis (fornication with minors of the same sex) was taken up again, although in the meantime another cabinet had taken office. It eventually led to the removal of the infamous article from the penal code in 1971, the first of the four legislative changes Swiebel describes and examines.
Marriage
Another important milestone in the legislative process surrounding the emancipation of homosexuality occurred in 1994 when the General Equal Treatment Act was introduced, a struggle that had lasted 20 years and (of course) also benefited the position of homosexuals, but not only homosexuals. In that formal definition, it should come as no surprise that marriage as an institution was legally opened to same-sex spouses seven years later, the third legal milestone (2001) that Swiebel describes. That subsequently Article 1 of the constitution would also be amended feels like a final piece of legislation: In 2023, among other things, the term “sexual orientation” was added to this constitutional article as a ground for non-discrimination.
Inner stirrings
As important as laws and regulations are in a formal sense, politics also has symbolic value. The legislative changes examined by Swiebel involved changes in the legal status of gay men and lesbian women, but they also had (and still have) symbolic significance. According to Swiebel, they underscored the principle of equality and contributed to changes in societal attitudes about homosexuality, although the symbolic meaning, especially in the beginning, was more often implicit than explicit. “While homosexual orientation was initially understood in terms of inner stirrings, homosexual orientation later turned out to include expressions of it and even relationships and cohabitation,” Swiebel said.
Pioneering country
Is the Netherlands actually an international leader when it comes to emancipatory legislative policy on homosexuality? Swiebel rightly devotes a concluding consideration to this, if only because the Netherlands was the first country in the world to open marriage to same-sex couples in 2001. By the way, Amsterdam already had the reputation as the gay capital of Europe before that.
Internationally, however, the Netherlands no longer “belongs to the top European countries in this respect,” Swiebel says, referring to a statement made by (now outgoing) Minister Dijkgraaf in 2022. He based his statement on the Rainbow Index 2022 in which the Netherlands dropped from second to third place. “But that does not mean that the situation here in the country has deteriorated,” Swiebel believes. “It may also be due to the progress made in other countries. Other countries have caught up, so to speak, so it may seem that the Netherlands is now relatively behind.”
It just depends on what you look at. When it comes to opening civil marriage to homosexuals, the Netherlands was indeed ahead. But in other respects, the Netherlands is certainly not (or has not been) a pioneering country, Swiebel observes. The first European country to include in its constitution a provision prohibiting discrimination based on “sexual orientation”
was Portugal (2004), followed by several other countries, before the Netherlands joined the group in 2023. Too late to be a pioneering country in this regard.
Joker Swiebel, Homopolitics in the Netherlands (1966-2023). The symbolic power of legislation. PhD award ceremony on January 26th at 2:00 p.m. Location: Aula.
