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Belgium: Most liberal country in the world

Fun Fast Facts

  • One of the most progressive countries in Europe and around the world.
  • The Prime Minister of Belgium, Elio di Rupo, is an openly gay man and is one of the only two Prime Ministers in the world to identify as LGBT.
  • Same-sex sexual activity was legalised in 1795.
  • The second country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage in 2003 and same-sex adoption was completely legalized in 2006.

LGBT organisation: Cavaria

  • Flemish Belgium’s LGBT umbrella organisation
  • Çavaria makes educational materials and organises seminars
  • Assists asylum seekers and participates on international LGBT conferences
  • Lobbies the Belgium government on LGBT issues, particularly HIV/AIDS awareness

W3JOY interviewed: Alderman Philip Heylen, Vice Mayor of the City of Antwerp

 The most important thing is that Antwerp has always been a very open city, we’ve been so for centuries.

Organising the World Out Games is a statement–a statement about equality.

Antwerp has always been a very liberal city, liberal in the right sense of the word.

It’s wonderful to have all these friends coming together here…it’s about sport, it’s about uniting people together.

Article 60 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be changed so it allows same-sex people the right to have families.

 

W3JOY interviewed: Dennis from Cavaria

We are not only working for the well-being of gay, lesbian and bisexual people, but also transgendered people.

We had an incident in Belgium, the first ever registered incident, of a homophobic murder….that got things moving.

The Socialist party and the Green party formed a government along with the Liberal party. And that government did a lot of things, like introduce gay marriage.

What we did in Belgium, which was very smart, was first we introduced gay marriage…but the movement was very smart, we first introduced gay marriage. Then we had a period where people got used to that idea. Then after a few years, we went back to the government and asked to introduce adoption. I think because we did that in two steps that there was little resistance.

We have a movement that goes way back. It’s taken lots of years to form, and that’s let it form a lot of structure.

 

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