May 13, 2005  |  By: Chris Crain  | COMMENTS     

In the week following the violent attack in Amsterdam on my boyfriend and me by seven men angry that we were holding hands, the Dutch media have focused a tremendous amount of attention on the assault.

In a 20-minute story on Holland’s answer to “60 Minutes,” and in radio and newspaper reports in newspapers, and on countless news and blog sites, the gay-friendly Dutch have struggled to place the attack in a broader context.

Was it an isolated incident or the latest in a series that suggests a changing climate in the Netherlands that no longer fits the country’s legendary reputation as open and tolerant toward all?

Particularly incendiary has been my description of our attackers as having “Moroccan-like features” and accents. I was generally aware of tension over immigration policies in Holland, but of the more than 700 messages I’ve received, roughly half have focused almost exclusively on the assumed cultural and religious heritage of our attackers and the dangers many native Dutch feel from their version of the “Culture Wars” we have fought in the U.S. for years.

The other half of the messages dealt instead with the anti-gay motivation of our attackers and urged my boyfriend and me to return to Amsterdam, and to hold hands in the street without fear. We have been touched more than we can say by this show of support, from abroad and at home.

All of the messages were sympathetic and some dealt with the cultural conflict in a thoughtful, careful manner. But many Dutch residents were particularly blunt in their disgust for the changes they see in their country.

“This kind of behavior is exactly why the Dutch would like to see the Moroccans go back home rather sooner than later,” wrote one woman in a typical message. “Because they are miles apart from Dutch culture.”

“You seem to think that those Moroccans only hate gay people?” wrote a resident of Leiden, near Amsterdam. “Forget it! They hate everyone who isn’t Moroccan. For years our government is telling us to be tolerant, to try to understand ‘our new Dutch.’ This is where it leads.”

Andrew Sullivan kindly helped spread initial word about the attack on his eponymous blog, and like many others couched the Dutch Culture Wars in explicit religious terms.

“Hatred of open and proud homosexuals is intrinsic to Islamist fundamentalism, as it is to Christian fundamentalism,” he wrote. “The struggle against both is the same one — at home and abroad.”

Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Program at the Human Rights Watch, also blamed the attack in part on “global fundamentalism” — mainly U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson and the new Catholic pope. He went on to claim our assault was the natural response of a Muslim minority routinely discriminated against by native Dutch.

“There’s still an extraordinary degree of racism in Dutch society,” Long said in an interview with PlanetOut. “Gays often become the victims of this when immigrants retaliate for the inequities that they have to suffer.”

MY OWN VIEW is that many of our well-intentioned supporters are approaching the underlying cause of hate violence in fundamentally misguided ways. Long, in particular, only fans the flames of hate by blaming our attack on Dutch society, which has enacted the most progressive gay laws in the world, for producing an anti-gay attack.

There was no racist component to our attack, as he implies. Our attackers would have reacted at least as viciously to two men of their own ethnicity who walked the street as lovers.

Long’s brand of “blame the society” political correctness is a distraction from the very real cultural clashes happening in Holland and elsewhere. In his role at Human Rights Watch, Long has no business being an apologist for hate, and for the bias-motivated violence it produces.

It’s also too easy to point the finger at America’s favorite target — fundamentalist Islam. We were walking back to our hotel room in the wee hours on Saturday morning through a street full of holiday revelers. Our attackers were not on the corner for morning prayers.

I do not mean to discount the influence of religion on culture. I grew up in the American South, where fundamentalist Christianity provided aid and comfort for the racist oppression of blacks and ...