Churches in The Netherlands have given a mixed response to the country's first civil weddings for same-sex couples, which took place April 1 in Amsterdam's town hall.
Three male couples and one female couple were married immediately after midnight when a new law on marriage and adoption rights came into force. The event was described by supporters as the world's most comprehensive recognition of gay rights and as the world's first official gay marriage ceremony, although a few other countries also give various degrees of legal recognition to gay relationships.
Some smaller Dutch churches have reacted positively to the event, while other churches, including the country's biggest, the Roman Catholic Church, have rejected the move.
Amsterdam's new mayor, Job Cohen, who officiated at the weddings, played a major role in guiding the new law through both houses of parliament when he was a senior official in the national ministry for justice. The new law was approved in September by the Dutch parliament's Second Chamber, by 109 votes to 33 against. The First Chamber, the Senate, approved the law late last year. The new gay law is also valid for present and future members of the royal family, including any monarch.
The law, which allows the country's "registered partnerships" for same-sex couples to be upgraded to fully-fledged marriages, is the latest in a series of ground-breaking legislation approved by the Dutch parliament. The law gives homosexual couples almost the same rights as heterosexual couples. Married same-sex couples may now also adopt children.
According to the Associated Press, the Roman Catholic Church and the main Protestant churches in The Netherlands do not recognize civil gay marriages.
Asked by ENI to comment, the nation's main inter-church body, the Council of Churches in The Netherlands, said that it had no official position regarding the new law "because churches involved in the council have differing standpoints." Seventeen churches are members of the council, including the Roman Catholic Church and the biggest Protestant body here, Uniting Protestant Churches in The Netherlands.
There was disagreement about the issue within the Uniting Protestant Churches in The Netherlands (Samen op Weg-kerken), church spokesperson Klaas van der Kamp told ENI. However, "now that the government is making same-sex marriages possible, the issue comes back to us as churches."
A federation of the two main Reformed churches and the smaller Lutheran church, the Uniting Protestant Churches represent 2.74 million Christians. In 1997 a joint synod of the three member churches defined marriage as "a union of love and fidelity before God and thus an image of the relationship between Christ and his congregation [which] is fitting to be kept holy." The synod concluded that there was no agreement within the three member churches about whether same-sex partnerships met the definition of marriage "as a union of love and fidelity before God."
The Roman Catholic Church has criticized same-sex relationships and has ordered priests not to bless them. However, a recent survey by an academic at Utrecht University, Professor R. Tielman, found that 83 percent of Catholic priests in The Netherlands had no problem with blessing same-sex relationships
Several small churches have welcomed the new law or at least expressed openness on the issue.
E. Verhey, general secretary of the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands (Oud-Katholieke Kerk van Nederland), told ENI that the government's decision to place homosexual and heterosexual marriages on an equal footing was "simply a fact that we have to take account of. You can't get around it."
The Old Catholic Church has set up a commission to advise the church's bishops about possible liturgies for blessing gay marriages.
A similar study was started a few years ago, but ran into difficulties because the discussions went beyond the original brief, Verhey told ENI. The reasoning at the time was that "if you go ahead with a decision to study this [subject], then doubts also arise about your own conception of the sacrament of marriage."
Another minority church, the Remonstrant Brotherhood (Remonstrantse Broederschap) had no difficulties with the new law, its general secretary, Mynke Bosman, told ENI. In 1986 the Brotherhood approved the blessing of life partnerships between people of the same sex. Bosman described the Remonstrant Brotherhood as "a uniquely Dutch church" which in 1619 split away from what is now the Netherlands Reformed Church.
The issue of allowing civil marriage for same-sex couples was "certainly" not a controversial issue in the Mennonite Church in The Netherlands, spokesperson Jaap Bruesewitz told ENI. The Mennonite Church was, Bruesewitz said, a "denomination of autonomous congregations and autonomous persons within congregations, who are thus more or less free" to take decisions. The church had no sacraments and no ordained clergy, and had a form of church wedding that was open to both heterosexual and homosexual couples, he said.
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But six other Protestant Reformed churches lobbied strongly against the new law which they described, in a statement last September, as "a disgrace."
They added: "It is in essence an act of pride against God to undertake such a change of understanding. Can we still expect the blessing of the Almighty, when we no longer care about his mission?"
Amsterdam's mayor, Job Cohen, told ENI in an interview: "The most important significance of [opening civil marriage to same-sex couples], as far as I am concerned, is its emancipatory effect. It would not surprise me that its coming into effect will lead to more tolerance with regard to homosexuality."
Cohen said that the new law on civil marriage made The Netherlands a model for other countries to emulate in this regard. Asked whether gay marriages were in harmony with his religious convictions, Mayor Cohen replied that he was not "a religious believer."
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