The View From Your Protest: Amsterdam

A reader writes:

Over here in the Netherlands, gays and lesbians are first class citizens with all the same rights as anyone else. Those of us from the US however, lose those rights whenever we travel home. Cross the US border and you become a second class citizen. If you have a non-US same-sex spouse or partner, it’s hard not to become bitter about our lack of rights back home.

As a US citizen (I have been legally married to a Dutch citizen for more than 7-1/2 years), I can sponsor my next of kin – parents, children, spouses of my parents – for a green card, but not my wife. I can bring my dog to the US, but not my wife.

Today we had more than 50 people at our Join the Impact protest at the historic Homomonument, the world’s first monument to gays and lesbians killed and persecuted just for being who they are. We protested the big step backward that California just took with Prop 8.