David Bos, “Equal Rites Before the Law: Religious Celebrations of Same-Sex Relationships in the Netherlands, 1967-1970”
Wednesday, 8 April 2015, 10:30-12:00 CST
Oudemanhuispoort 4-6
1012 CN
Amsterdam
The legalization of same-sex marriage is commonly depicted as an achievement of LGBTQ+ emancipation and of secularization. The fact that the Netherlands were the first country to open up civil marriage for same-sex couples is explained from the marginalization of churches, and from the 1994 defeat of the Christian Democratic party. However, precisely this party had been the first to propose the legal recognition of “alternative relationships” in the 1980s—which was then laughed off by the LGB-movement and the political Left. What is more, in the 1960s and 1970s already religious solemnizations of same-sex relationships occurred in Catholic and mainline-Protestant churches. In this lecture, three spectacular, highly publicized cases will be discussed. It will be argued that religious institutions and traditions have not only posed an obstacle to non-heterosexual men and women, but offered them a repertoire of symbolic expression and contestation.
David Bos holds a Master’s degree in theology (Groningen, 1990) and a PhD in sociology (University of Amsterdam, 1999). He worked as the editor-in-chief of the Netherlands leading mental health monthly (MGv), and as an assistant professor in Utrecht University’s Department of Religious Studies. In addition, as a postdoc, he did research on the social acceptance of homosexuality in the Netherlands. At present, he is a lecturer in sociology at University of Amsterdam and a postdoc at the Amsterdam Center for the Study of Lived Religion (VU), involved in a research project on “the oppositional pairing of religion and homosexuality in contemporary public discourse in the Netherlands.