The housing developer behind the Dutch “gay village” concept that flooded your social feeds yesterday has revealed the entire story to be a “hoax,” leading some to wonder if the project was indeed real and simply scrapped in response to an onslaught of negative feedback.
Yesterday, we reported that gay activists in the Netherlands were steamed by the thought of an all-gay village, comprised of thirteen housing locations in a fenced-in area in the city of Tilburg. (Even though this is not the first time this sort of thing has been proposed.)
Editors at Gay.nl labeled the project a “gay ghetto,” and argued that an exclusively gay community was not an appropriate solution to a startling statistic that reveals 22 percent of Dutch men feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods. “LGBTs should be able to live safely in the entire community,” they wrote.
It had been reported that the project was approved by mayor Peter Noordanus and given the green light.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Today, Dutch LGBT organization Roze Maandag (Pink Monday) enters the fold, explaining that the entire story was a hoax designed to expose homophobia. Whaaat?
The statement, in part, is printed here with the help of Google Translate, who has obviously been drinking today:
Foundation Rose Monday with the idea of gay village to developer Blue Hat and LBB Naber Brokers stepped. The foundation did not realize gay village serious mind, but was primarily interested in the reactions that the initiative would have and creating awareness.
Because although gay village is not real, is the intolerance against the gay community that indeed. A safe environment is not obvious to everyone. Members of the gay community have to deal every day with discrimination and violence. Gay village is not the solution to this problem, but plays as an idea in a need which today has shown that indeed exists. However, this is not the Rose Foundation Monday.
Thousands of people on social media and the web pages of the regional and national press reacted negatively to the idea. Negative for positive Rose Monday.
GayStarNews reports that not everyone is buying it:
On social media, some say it is a possibility that the real estate developer panicked over the negative reaction and asked Roze Maandag to help them out.
A spokesperson told the Netherlands Times: ‘We are happy with the thousands of negative, and the fewer positive, reactions. It is great to hear that the majority is against the idea.
‘All we wanted was to create an awareness, and we are certain that we succeeded in this.’
Funny that an effort to expose homophobia only exposed homophobia from within the gay community. Gay activists were the ones primarily fumed over this village idea — we didn’t hear a peep from the straights yesterday.
So, yeah, this was probably an awful idea to begin with.
Stevenw
I’m not surpised at this being a hoax.
The Netherlands was always one of the most tolerant countries in Europe; it would have had to have changed a hell of a lot for a ‘gay ghetto’ to have made any sense.