Responding to research that suggests 22 percent of gay men in the Netherlands feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods, a Dutch real estate company is looking to build a “gay village” in the city of Tilburg comprised of thirteen housing locations all fenced in together.
Activists are crying foul, equating the project to a ghetto. Though in this ghetto, the average home price will still set you back roughly $338k.
Gay community website, Gay.nl, said, “Did you mean ghetto?” while advocacy group COC reasoned that, “‘We don’t think a gay village is the right solution to unsafe living surroundings for Dutch LGBTs. LGBTs should be able to live safely in the entire country.”
Tilburg mayor Peter Noordanus is welcoming the project, touting it as a potential benefit for LGBT seniors.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Which it very well may be, except that’s not how it’s being pitched by the developer.
No word yet on whether or not the project has been given the green light to break ground.
H/t: Gay Star News
robirob
A physical and mental place where you feel safe and secure is a luxury for most people. A gayborhood can help some people to deal with personal issues and build up confidence and strength to face homophobia without being crushed by it.
masc4masc
@robirob: I agree. This is basically just a gayborhood. $338k is hardly “ghetto”. I can’t think of a good reason to not at least make such a place an available option for this 22 percent.
vive
It won’t be a very interesting gayborhood, since few young or less well off gay people could afford those prices. And you need a diversity of ages and social classes to make a neighborhood interesting.
Throbert McGee
I would guess that the fences around this proposed “Gay Village” aren’t to keep out pesky Mormon guys on bicycles.
The elephant in the room, I suspect, is the ongoing debates in some European countries about “poorly assimilated immigrants of North African origin.”
Throbert McGee
I had to try three times to post my comment, making it shorter and vaguer each time. My hunch is that the six-letter word beginning and ending with M and having “u-s-l-i” in the middle just might be on the site’s list of “red flag” terms…
james_in_cambridge
@Throbert McGee: We know what you’re talking about; here in the U.S. we have to put up with Christian loons but in Europe, it’s certain youths of a different faith that are causing widespread terror against Gays.
http://queerlife.co.za/test/gay-opinions/31-opinions/643-gay-europe-is-warned-about-muslim-sharia-law.html
“One familiar response is: ?Well, non-Muslims beat up gays, too!? Yep ? indeed they do. Yet for a while there, in much of Western Europe, homosexuality was on its way to being a non-issue. In Amsterdam in the late 1990s, I was delightfully surprised to discover that when groups of straight teenage boys passed gay couples in the streets, they just walked past without any reaction whatsoever. The sight of gay people didn?t upset, threaten, amuse, or confuse them; the familiar, insecure urge to respond to open homosexuality with some kind of distancing, disdainful word or gesture ? and thereby affirm to one another, and to themselves, their own heterosexual credentials ? was simply not part of those kids? makeup. For me, it was a remarkable experience. Amsterdam then seemed to me the leading edge of a new wave in the progress of human civilization.
Alas, it is now very clearly the opposite. The number of reported gay-bashings in Amsterdam now climbs steadily year by year. Nearly half Muslim, the city is a front in the struggle between democracy and sharia, under which, lest it be forgotten, homosexuality can be a capital offense. Things have gotten so bad there that even on the part of the exceedingly politically correct, there has been a degree of acknowledgment that something has changed, and is still changing. After a group of Amsterdam Muslims beat up Chris Crain, the six-foot-five editor of the gay newspaper The Washington Blade, in May 2005, the head of the Netherlands? leading gay-rights organization admitted that tolerance of gay people in that city was ?slipping away like sand through the fingers? and that ?gays and lesbians are less willing to walk hand-in-hand because they might be beaten up.?”
Alan down in Florida
This sounds like putting the fish into a barrel where they can be more easily shot. Anyone who lost family in the holocaust remembers how dangerous ghettoization can be.
ttzach
@james_in_cambridge:where ever this quote came from, it’s utter crap. ” Nearly half Muslim”? pulled that out your ass did you? Amsterdam’s muslim population is 4.5%, so either you are terrible at fractions, or you are a liar.
james_in_cambridge
@ttzach: I didn’t write the article. Also, according to Wikipedia, Muslims make up 17% of the population in Amsterdam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_Netherlands#Demographic_situation
michael mellor
While The Netherlands is gay-friendly at the level of the law, it is not gay-friendly at the level of the street. You rarely – if ever – see two men holding hands in the streets of Amsterdam, for instance.
Dutch people are still openly hostile to PDA’s by two men.
AnitaMann
Sounds like a great idea. If people want to congregate with people like themselves they should be allowed to do that.
James Hart
A gated community. What a novel idea?
James Hart
@Throbert McGee: Political correctness has no bounds.
mauricez
This is an PR Stunt. They did this to promote a Gay festival in Tilburg.
Obviously this is not going to happen.
mauricez
Besides that, i live in Amsterdam and its a great City to live as a gay guy. We dont have that much problems as others imply here. Ofcourse the situation is not perfect, but its not as bad some people say.
fagburn
This was a hoax.
Maybe avoid taking stories from the fools at Gay Star News in future?
Aires the Ram
The elephant in the room that few wish to discuss, is the ever growing presence of immigrants from middle eastern and north african countries, who feel it is their duty to eliminate homosexuals. As long as the Netherlands keeps letting them in, the problem is going to get much worse.
Cam
The real issue isn’t that the problems in the Netherlands are coming from immigrants etc..
What the real problem is there is the same problem we have here. Crazy religious nuts who think that they have the right to attack, demean and go after the civil rights of gays and anybody else that they feel like it, using their religion as an excuse. Doesn’t matter if it’s right wing Christian nuts, or Muslim nuts. There isn’t much difference. And frankly the only reason those two groups hate each other is because they are so similar.
ingyaom
It’s not really a ghetto unless they force you to go there – which I don’t see happening in this case.