Out pro volleyball player and Olympic champion Douglas Souza is using his massive social media platform to share about the homophobia he and his boyfriend, Gabriel, recently experienced at an airport in Europe.
In his Instagram stories yesterday, the 26-year-old explained that they were passing through the Netherlands on their way to Italy when a customs and immigration official seemed to take issue with the fact that they were a gay couple.
“I won’t go into too much detail because I don’t want to carry this energy, but I’ll tell it more or less,” he explained. “Basically, it was me and my boyfriend, we took a flight from São Paulo to Amsterdam and there we had to go through passport control to go to Rome.”
“Until then everything was calm. By the time we went to control, the guy was super cool, he asked me what I was going to do in Italy, I explained that I was a volleyball player, that I had been hired by that team. Then he asked who Gabriel was and I explained.”
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That’s when things got ugly.
Souza continued, “When I said it was my boyfriend, his face changed and so did the treatment. He asked what Gabriel was going to do there, I showed him in the stable union document. I said he would accompany me.”
According to Sausa, the official then called another man over, who led the couple over to a different area and then told them to wait… for five hours.
“They left us there for about five hours without any kind of explanation,” he recalled. “After about five or six hours, they called me in a small room to ask what I was going to do there.”
Sousa says he tried to remain as “normal” and “calm” as possible, but he describes the whole interrogation as very “strange.”
“They hit the key again about who Gabriel was and I tried to explain that it was my boyfriend and they had a lot of difficulty understanding,” he added. “We had the document of the common-law marriage. They absolutely didn’t want to let Gabriel pass.”
After several hours, the couple was eventually allowed out of the country and traveled on to their final destination.
Sousa took home a gold medal with the Brazil men’s national volleyball team in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro games, which took place in his home country roughly 600 miles east of São Paulo. He is currently the most followed pro volleyball player in the world on Instagram.
Scroll down for some pics from Sousa’s page…
BigJohnSF
This must have been Italian customs control, because the Dutch do not care about this. At all.
unreligious
There are homophobic people even in the most liberal of countries. It took place in the Netherlands, not Italy.
Derek Northcutt
This just doesn’t add up. Of course there are homophobes everywhere even in the low countries, but if the agent had escalated the problem of the boyfriend/spouse it would have been sorted out by another higher up. After all, did you know the Dutch government has an office at Schiphol that handles nothing but asylum requests from gay refugees from countries that would chop their heads off? There’s more to the story that we are not hearing.
Seb
Really? Second guessing victim’s account doesn’t add either. Maybe you’d like to contact the airport agency you mentioned and get clarification to share with us
Jer
It might be that the Dutch anti-gay official decided not to pass the situation on to his boss, who might not share his prejudice. So he just parked them someplace and forgot about them for five hours. Eventually they were permitted to move on.
Openminded
If it was anything other than homophobia, which I suspect is the truth, they may have taken issue with the boyfriend traveling for what I assume is an extended period of time with no job in place. It appears they were fine with the employed athlete, but possibly too narrow minded to understand Souza could support his significant other same as many hetero couples do. Most countries want long term visitors to be able to prove they can support themselves and are not just coming to that country to be a freeloader.
Hank31
@Openminded That’s actually not a bad hypothesis at all. It’s probably the best explanation other than homophobia. However, it doesn’t explain why they were forced to sit there for 5 hours or why it took several more hours to question them. That just seems punitive and malicious. Once they got the “stable union”/common law marriage document, they were in a position to make a decision, yea or nay. It doesn’t require hours-long interrogation.
One probable complicating factor is that the two guys were not conventionally married for some reason. Gay marriage is legal in Brazil, but they went for some sort of common law marriage instead. Probably added to the suspicion/confusion or gave a homophobic agent an excuse to drag it out.
ShiningSex
This happened to my husband and me in London. We were treated like shit there the last time we visited.
GayEGO
Terrible for this to happen. I am surprised this would happen in Holland.
Mattster
I’m very surprised this happened in Amsterdam, but it goes to show bigots are everywhere, and unfortunately in passport control/customs they have a lot of power to act arbitrarily and there’s very little you can do about it.
Partly for this reason, my partner and I don’t go through customs as a couple, we are not married but even if we were, we would go separately. The whole “who’s this?” question about relationships or whomever you’re with is really not relevant and will likely only hurt you. It’s great to be out and proud (and we are, generally) but we’d rather not be imprisoned in some airport purgatory for 5 hours and likely miss the next flight, traveling is enough of a hassle as it is.
Fahd
There is concern about human trafficking and maybe because the flight was from Brazil, but this seems way over the top for the Netherlands. Why hasn’t he complained to the Dutch government? It’s worth sending a letter, because five hours without a word is outrageous even if they were verifying documents and/or the boyfriend had a passport from a different country or whatever was going on during that long “detention”.
Maybe someone from the Dutch government will pick up on his Intagram post; but he should complain directly to the Dutch authorities – for everyone’s benefit.
Terrycloth
well he could have said a number of things. He didn’t he said he is my boyfriend. .didn’t lie…
JRamonMc
Hard to believe the Netherlands took this approach. I always thought they were among the most open of countries. So sorry you guys went through that.
RTG
I’m 1/2 of a gay couple and I’ve lived and worked in Europe and traveled the world with my partner, including some Muslim majority countries. Sorry but I have to go with the people who say there’s something more to this. Gay marriage has been legal in the Netherlands since 2001. And even before that, the Netherlands was one of the most open and accepting countries on the planet. And keep in mind that they were merely TRANSITING the country. And they were merely put in an area or room and abandoned for 5 hours? And the official who was called over didn’t overrule the initial customs official who caused the delay? And they didn’t think to ask to someone higher up? Sorry, not going along with it. I go through customs routinely with my partner. One Dutch customs official didn’t cause that issue due to his bigotry.
nm4047
seems far more to this that what has been written here. Never have I ever encountered anything like this in the Netherlands customs and transited through and enter through Schiphol dozens of times without any incident(s) entering with my partner. Something fishy here.
senza
Dutch customs responded to this news on Twitter, saying multiple passengers on that flight received an extra border check. All of these checks were finished after 6 hours, that sexual orientation has nothing to do with it and that if Douglas Souza feels otherwise they hope he makes a formal complaint.
I’m not convinced if all that really happen was that ‘his face changed when I told him he was my boyfriend’.
DCFarmboy
Yes. Probably not good to read too much in a facial expression. It would not surprise me if the officer was gay himself and, when the common name “Souza” came up for secondary inspection, the officer’s facial expression was because he was thinking “girlfriend, why did you have to tell me he is your partner. Now I have to send him to secondary too.”
NexPat
Im pretty sure this has nothing to do with them being gay. Brazil is a high variant country and on most red lists for europe, meaning people can not travel there. Im assuming that the issue wasn’t that they were gay, it is that they weren’t legally married. if they were it wouldn’t be a problem, as one had a valid reason to travel, but potentially because they weren’t it was an issue.
the dutch don’t care about gays
Mattster
This is absurd. If there’s a travel ban on Brazil, why did the plane even land there? Why were they allowed to go? They claim there’s a travel ban, not a “travel delay and inconvenience”. And just because the government and people in Holland generally are pro-gay doesn’t mean homophobia has been utterly eliminated. Passport control officers/customs agent have a lot of power and it’s entirely possible this particular one is a bigot. You don’t need to look hard to find bigots in progressive places such as San Francisco or Manhattan either. As I understand it, the couple IS married, and that this relationship, not a COVID travel ban, was the issue. Who would marriage matter for a COVID travel ban?
Invader7
There are backwards a-holes everywhere.. That douche customs person will get some bad karma…