Just after midnight on April 1, three couples exchanged vows at Amsterdam’s City Hall and became part of a 25-year anniversary that belongs to the whole world. The Netherlands was the first country on earth to legalize same-sex marriage, and the ceremony that took place in 2001 has since been followed by nearly 40 other nations. Amsterdam’s mayor conducted the anniversary ceremony in the same building where her predecessor first joined four couples in matrimony a quarter century ago. One of those original couples came back for the celebration. Dolf Pasker, who married his husband Gert Kasteel on that first day in 2001, stood in the room where it happened and said it was unbelievable and so beautiful that there was so much attention for it. More than 36,000 same-sex couples have married in the Netherlands since that first midnight ceremony.
The country’s prime minister, Rob Jetten, attended the anniversary and spoke to reporters about watching the original ceremony on television when he was 14 years old, saying it had been personally inspiring and emancipating for him, as it had been for so many others. Jetten is the country’s first openly gay prime minister and is planning his own wedding. The former mayor who conducted that original ceremony in 2001, Job Cohen, also returned for the celebration and said that looking back, he believed it was the most important thing he did during his time as mayor, even if he did not fully grasp its significance at the time. The ripple of that single night in Amsterdam moved across four continents. It became the legal foundation that couples in nearly 40 countries now stand on, and the permission for millions of people around the world to call the person they love their spouse.
