Yes, those guys there in uniform on one of the floats towards the end waving to the crowds were police officers – you noticed them?

Keep in mind, though, that this short clip was the teaser – so to speak – for the live broadcast of this year’s/today’s Canal Parade planned by the Dutch media organization AVRO, i.e. it shows a parade from some past year. For this year, some of you out there might be pleased to hear that festivities have been repeatedly interrupted by heavy downpours, accompanied occasionally by thunder and lightning! Make of that what you will.

Prague takes its turn at this sort of thing next weekend – meaning a Gay Pride festival, and actually for the very first time. Should be interesting! I mean, how will society there react to events like this? No canals there though – just a river, and it’s too wide for any such aquatic parade.

                          

Then again, up to now the Dutch military has also not been too happy with any sign of its presence at the Gay Pride parade – like soldiers floating along on the boats while in uniform, something that happened last year and led to some sort of uproar (presumably including sanctions against those military personnel). But now that has changed; the Volkskrant reports today (but in a story credited to the Dutch news agency ANP) that permanent Defense Ministry undersecretary (Staatssecretaris) Jack de Vries has announced, through a spokesman, that participating in Gay Pride in your uniform is OK – but that that should still in no way be interpreted as official Defense Ministry participation in, or endorsement of, the festival.

Perhaps the really interesting thing here is that this is not just some spontaneous decision from the Ministry, but rather is in reaction to encouragement from the Dutch lower house of Parliament (the Tweede Kamer) to make such a policy change. That, it seems, was ultimately among the more significant follow-on effects of last year’s controversy.

                          

It’s not alone, though: the Reformatorisch Dagblad, or “Reformed Daily,” is similar, although that website does stay open on Sundays. People should not confuse the allegedly “anything goes” atmosphere of cosmopolitan cities like Amsterdam (see this weblog’s recent coverage of the famous yearly Gay Pride parade there, for example) with Dutch culture as a whole, which in fact features some enclaves which can easily hold their own in the Christian piety department with any of the American Amish communities.

The Nederlands Dagblad reports today, as the 2008 Olympic Games open in Beijing, that the Chinese church leader Zhang Mingxuan was recently arrested by the authorities in his hometown in the province of Henan, along with his wife and another associate, and brought to an office of the “security services” in that province’s capital, Zhengzhou. This follows Zhang’s being driven out of his Beijing by the authorities at the beginning of last month, and then out of the city itself two weeks ago.

The Stichting De Ondergrondse Kerk (a Dutch name, of course: “Foundation of the Underground Church”) has issued a call to make these opening days of the Olympic Games days of prayer on behalf of the persecuted Christians in China.

                          

It also enjoys a rather high level of public support. That was perhaps the main point of the article from Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza that I covered here on Tuesday, which noted that, for the first time, a national cabinet minister will be officially present in the parade (namely Ronald Plasterk, of Education, Culture, and Science) as well as an official boat from the police. But it turns out that Gazeta didn’t know the half of it (and probably did not want to know the half of it, in any case): this whole new politician phenomenon has mushroomed so rapidly that not only have plenty other national Dutch lawmakers scrambled to find a place for themselves for today on a Gay Pride boat, but questioning eyebrows are even being raised in the direction of politicians who will not be present.

So, at least, reports Yvonne Doorduyn of De Volkskrant (Absent Politicians Given a Problem By Gay Pride). “Today everyone is practically required to be homo-friendly” she declares in her first paragraph, and among the additional politicians slated to be on-hand to demonstrate that quality personally (besides Job Cohen, Amsterdam’s mayor, who is always there and whom I mentioned on Tuesday) are the Minister of Internal Affairs (i.e. cabinet member in charge of the police, Guusje ter Horst – a woman, by the way) and two staatssecretarissen, i.e. cabinet secretaries or the top civil service functionaries in a cabinet department. What is more, a number of Dutch political parties will be there on the water on their own sponsored boats, namely GroenLinks (i.e. the Green Party), D66, and the party (“Proud of the Netherlands”) only recently-formed as the personal vehicle for the right-wing, anti-immigrant (female) politician Rita Verdonk. It would therefore be no surprise to see Rita herself there on her “Proud of the Netherlands” boat, waving to the crowds on either bank.

So what about the other parties – what about the VVD (the leading non-extremist right-wing business-friendly party), for example? For that matter, what about Dutch premier Jan Peter Balkenende himself, or his vice-premier André Rouvoet, of the Christian party, the ChristenUnie, both of whom were specifically invited, after all, by Minister Plasterk? Frankly, of all of those one would expect at least Rouvoet to reply with some self-distancing remarks about homosexuality, given the stance and policy positions of his Christianist party. But nothing of the sort – as Doorduyn reports (in a section labeled “obstructed”) all these reluctantly reported that their schedules simply would not allow it – it’s vacation time, after all, so it’s hard to fit things like that in. Again, though, the truly remarkable thing here is how, from something that national politicians were attending this year for the first time, the Gay Pride parade has so quickly metamorphosed into something where the attendance of politicians – extending up to the highest levels of government (although not to the Royal Family – yet?!?) – has become expected.

“Thank God I’m Gay”

Anyway, all of those nice politicians whose schedules did allow it will be along for the ride as today’s Gay Pride parade pushes off from the North/West end of the Prinsengracht, floating along with other boats displaying banners with such messages (as Doorduyn records) as “Simply Gay,” “I Do Believe I’m Gay,” and “Thank God I’m Gay” (these all written in English). Meanwhile, elsewhere in town the city zoo is offering for the weekend special Gay Pride tours focusing on homosexual behavior by animals. (Dear reader, I kid thee not – although, interestingly, there’s no mention of these tours on the zoo’s website, neither its English nor its Dutch version.) It’s certainly somewhat of a different cultural we have here in Amsterdam, is it not?, if nothing else.

By the way, this year’s parade also records a “first” in that it includes boats representing commercial companies. You’ll probably agree that that is something rather less surprising to see come along. But it raises the question: Now that it seems everyone with something to sell to the public, whether it be for votes or for money, is clamoring to get involved in the Gay Pride parade, how long will it take before purists start to pine for those lost times of innocence – of pure unencumbered floating, costumed, dancing, codpiece-flaunting, buttocks-exhibiting homosexual innocence – before all the hucksters of one stripe or another started crowding in?

                          

Granted, there are many in this cosmopolitan town for whom the very idea of homosexuals cavorting in a rather exhibitionist manner on boats floating through town poses something of a cultural shock. For one thing, there are the various Muslim immigrants from Morocco, Turkey, and elsewhere – more about them later. But Gay Pride Amsterdam must also seem rather disconcerting to European immigrants hailing from more conservative countries on the continent. Like the Netherlands’ Polish population, for example, which has been steadily growing here just as it has in the UK and Ireland and elsewhere in Western Europe since the entry of Poland into the EU in on 1 May 2004.

Those Poles already in the Netherlands may have to come to terms with the Gay Pride festival on their own, but in the meantime the spectacle surely has the potential to sell newspapers in the old country to good Polish citizens attracted to the phenomenon with the same “I-can’t-look-but-I-must” fascination that normally applies to car accident scenes on the highway. Reporter Jacek Pawlicki obliges readers of Poland’s top national daily Gazeta Wyborcza with an account entitled All of Amsterdam Sails with the Gays.

Not Everyone Here Is Involved

First of all, it’s hardly true at all that all of Amsterdam is having something to do with this weekend’s festivities – many of us are confident that we will be able to avoid it – but still, in all, the article succeeds in being a fairly factual account of the phenomenon. What you have to assume is Pawlicki’s basic distaste for the whole affair only strains up against the warp and woof of his text in a couple of places. He has a problem, for instance, with the use of the word “pride” in the context of the parade, twice adding “or so it is called” after the use of that noun. And he points out that, among the 70 boats sailing along, there will be one representing gay teenagers “which prompts a response in all of Europe.”

Finally, his article takes pains to point out the extent of official support among municipal and political leaders for the festival. As with the above-mentioned reference to gay teenagers, you get the feeling that this is not just a recitation of relevant facts but rather something with an implied “and can you believe this?!” hovering behind it. This year, for the first time, the parade will feature an actual member of the Dutch cabinet, Ronald Plasterk of the Education Ministry, no less. (Pawlicki gets Plasterk’s first name wrong, calling him “Roland.”) Also for the first time there will be official police representation in the parade – no, not the sort of crowd-control that you would expect the police to routinely perform at such events, but an actual boat in the parade representing the police, together with another, unofficial one from “Pink in Blue” – the organization of homosexuals working in the police ranks. (The article’s one illustration is of an overcrowded boat labeled “Pink Police” – probably yet another unofficial organization along the lines of “Pink in Blue.”)

Oh, and Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen will also take part, but that is nothing new. Of more interest is that, prior to the parade, he will be meeting with representatives of city organizations representing homosexuals from among the Turkish and North African communities in the city. Of course, these people have a particularly tough time with their lifestyle choice, especially back in their native countries, as they find themselves living within a native culture that attaches a great stigma to homosexuality. This fact enables Pawlicki to mention that, in fact, public attacks against homosexuals – verbal, but now increasingly with physical violence – have increased over the last few years, with most of the perpetrators indeed being of Muslim origin, and with a particularly brutal assault occurring last Queen’s Day (30 April, the Dutch national holiday) against a “male model” famous within homosexual circles, Mike Du Pree. That could well be the behind-the-scenes motivation for why the Gay Pride celebrations get so brazen and frenetic, and why there are all these official gestures of support: that Amsterdam is actually afraid of losing its status as a leading tolerant international city for homosexuals, despite itself.

Correction: From further investigation it seems that “Pink in Blue” is actually the Amsterdam Police’s special program devoted to the reporting and investigation of anti-homosexual offenses in the city.