Subscribe to Breaking News
Loading ...Amsterdam gay Christmas features same-sex Nativity
12.08.2008 1:53pm EST
(Amsterdam, Netherlands) A Dutch gay group said Monday it has planned a “Pink Christmas” festival for the first time in Amsterdam, featuring a manger stall with two Josephs and two Marys.
Other attractions in the 10-day festival include parties, an open-air market, gay-themed films, an ice skating rink and religious services on Dec. 25.ProGay group chairman Frank van Dalen said Monday the event is intended to increase the choices for homosexual men and women during the Christmas holiday week.
“Right now, there’s not much to do,” he said.
The festival will also encourage people to think about homosexuality and religion, Van Dalen added.
Some Christian groups protested. The organization Christians for Truth said the idea “mocks the core concepts of Evangelism.”
“By putting Joseph and Mary down as homosexuals, a cracked human fantasy is being tacked on to history from the Bible,” the organization said in a statement urging the city and organizers to cancel the event.
The manger, with actors playing the parts of Joseph and Mary, goes on display Dec. 21.
Van Dalen said it was not intended to be offensive, but was meant as a “wink” at heterosexual assumptions.
“Christmas is about more than religion, it’s also about love and families, not to mention shopping,” he said. “Two men or two women can form a family too these days, even one with a child.”
Gay marriage was legalized in the Netherlands in 2001, and adoption rules are the same here for gay or straight couples.
Van Dalen said the Pink Christmas initiative was also intended to help promote Amsterdam as a gay capital after a decline in its reputation in recent years.
A study last month found that homophobia is an ingrained problem in the city despite the Dutch reputation for tolerance, and physical attacks on gay men are a weekly affair.
whenever gays do something like this, its not HOMOphobia that normal people are suffering from. its HOMOcidal tendencies that we’re feeling
Obviously the Prince of Peace has made an enormous difference amongst His followers! Those who mock the Creator’s incarnation know they can get away with it because Believers who take the New Testament literally have an incredible 2000-year history of quietly suffering attack from all directions — in the Roman Empire, in the first Crusades, in the Roman Inquisition; even today in India. Those who despise others, like those yahoos in Amsterdam, will not dare to slur other types of gods such as Allah, because of their fear of the much more angry and violent followers of those deities.
Just as God smited America on 9/11 for their choosing as President the ignorant, lying, power mongering, and homophobic President Bush.
Now there is a thought, even though it is a terrible though, I agree. But maybe true, though sickeningly so.
But it sure answers the right wing christians, who said just the opposite. To support their own ignorance and hatreds
I think this is called religious freedom. Exposing the hypocrisy of the Calvinists. As an example, these people, about 80000 who live in Holland, would rather see their children get polio, then take a polio shot. I suppose they are also right to lifers.
Does fundamentalist religion, living in the dark ages or prehistoric times, have no shame at all?
Or is mankind destined to fail as a species, unless these people get their heads examined, and a shrink to clear the cobwebs of ignorance and blind following of leaders who are the enemy of civilization.
How different is this failing, then that of the Germans, who followed their maniac to ruin in the 1930s .