The Netherlands Holds the First Legal Same-Sex Weddings

On 1 April 2001, Job Cohen, the Mayor of Amsterdam, officiated at the civil weddings of four same-sex couples, marking the moment the Netherlands became the first country in the world to open civil marriage to partners of the same sex. Cohen had previously served as State Secretary for Justice, the junior ministerial post in which he had spoken for the cabinet on the marriage bill in 2000. The new statute amended Article 1:30 of the Dutch Civil Code to state that marriage could be entered into by two persons of different sex or of the same sex, the culmination of a campaign for marriage rights that had built up over many years.

Early legal recognition of cohabitation had begun incrementally in Dutch law. In 1979, the country enacted its first statute acknowledging cohabiting same-sex couples for the purposes of rent regulations, allowing a tenant's partner of either sex to become a co-tenant after two years in a lasting joint household. Activism gained public momentum in the following years, with veteran campaigners such as Henk Krol pressing the national government to grant marriage rights.