Sono troppo giovane per ricordare un tempo in cui i matrimoni gay non erano consentiti e mi mette a disagio il fatto di dare per scontato questo diritto, soprattutto quando mi viene in mente la situazione in altri paesi (come gli Stati Uniti, che potrebbero perdere i matrimoni gay in il futuro). Quando do un’occhiata a [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Belgium), trovo che Vlaams Blok, CDH e MR abbiano votato contro e tutti gli altri partiti siano stati a favore. Negli archivi di De Standaard, ho trovato [this quote](https://standard.be/cnt/dmf20130614_00623060) del 2013: >*I francesi non sono più omofobi dei belgi. La ricerca mostra che i rapporti tra sostenitori e oppositori del matrimonio gay sono simili in entrambi i paesi. Il fatto che il nostro Paese abbia accettato così facilmente il matrimonio gay ha sorpreso perfino la comunità LGBT. Nessuno se lo aspettava così in fretta. Nel 1999 le elezioni furono una punizione per l’allora CVP. Per la prima volta in 40 anni il partito non ha partecipato al governo, che poi è diventato viola-verde. Verhofstadt attribuiva grande importanza ai dossier etici, anche solo per rompere con la politica dei democratici cristiani. Con sua sorpresa, anche il CVP non ha votato contro.* Ciò implica che abbiamo ottenuto i matrimoni gay (e l’eutanasia) a causa della crisi della diossina nel 1999. Ho controllato [the Flemish Canon](https://www.canonvanvlaanderen.be/events/het-homohuwelijk/), e sebbene sia stata una lettura interessante, non dice una parola sulle opinioni dei singoli partiti politici nel 20° secolo. Qualcuno può illuminarmi?
https://old.reddit.com/r/belgium/comments/1bgajvo/what_was_the_political_discourse_regarding_gay/
di Kikkervelf
7 commenti
The Netherlands voted for it in 2001. That made it waaaay easier to accept.
I also feel that at the time it really wasn’t an engaging topic for Belgians, one way or the other.
As I recall (I was a student at the time and very interested in politics) it really was seen as a pretty logical thing “gays and lesbians exist, we’re pretty ok with them, if they love each other, why shouldn’t they marry?”
So no big marches or protests, just a vote that no party really felt it was worth going against
Not sure how the political discourse was, among the people ‘janet’ was a common used slur
I think the typical Flemish pragmatism prevailed: people can do whatever they want in private as long as it doesn’t affect me. There were no big marches in Belgium, it all happened in the background. The decision in the Netherlands also helped to push things the right way.
I was a child in the ’80s, teenager in the ’90s. Raised catholic in a more rural environment, so about as bad as you could get on acceptance, or so you’d think. Maybe our priest was considered progressive back in the days, but the way I learned it was that *acting* gay was bad, but *being* gay was something people couldn’t help so we shouldn’t condemn them for it (basically, as long as they stayed celibate there was no problem – as an adult I do think that is a strange way to think). AIDS was still a much bigger and scarier thing in the ’80s too, now it can be managed much more effectively but back then it was a mostly gay problem that killed people.
When I was 8 or 9, a gay couple moved into our street. They took part in all neighborhood festivities and such, also invited people over for their birthdays, to me they were just a normal couple like others – although we were told not to play in their garden (us neighborhood kids kinda ignored fences). Might have been out of some remaining fear, might just have been because they didn’t have kids and our parents didn’t want to upset them by us messing up their garden.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to work out that one of my primary school teachers who was living with her friend was really a couple too.
All this just to say that the general attitude was “being gay is icky, so keep them away from me; unless they’re just people I know and they’re not too obvious about it, then it’s okay”
I’m glad people can be more open about being gay now!
Being gay wasn’t really a public thing in the 80s and early 90s. sure there were gays, and gay bars etc.
but you’d have to be part of the community to know about it. ar accidently enter such a bar.
it was generally actively ignored, and very much disapproved off.
there pretty much was none,the liberals made their big anti-catholic government, the socialists said “only of you make gay marriage legal” and they said okay and the general populace went: “gays have the right to be as unhappy as the rest of us” and that was that
i had two aunts who were born in the ‘40s and lived together as a couple, luckily no one in our family saw it as a problem, not even the religious ones but it was also something that wasn’t really talked about to us younglings growing up in ‘80s and ‘90s so it took us all an embarrassingly long time to put two and two together. They certainly loved each other but for one reason or another never got married, which i always assumed was a generational thing.