In an interview on Dutch national television, Henk Krol summed up all the measures adopted by the government in the past three decades. The most important thing was the Equal Opportunities Law,” he says. “The Netherlands was the first country to allow gays and lesbians to marry. It’s now our best export product. The law on joint parenthood for lesbians is almost ready. And anti-gay marriage registrars are going to be fired."

But the leading gay and lesbian organisation in the Netherlands, the COC, disagrees. According to its chairperson, Vera Bergkamp, “as long as we have students who have to struggle with their sexual preference and consider suicide five times more often than other students, as long as old people have to go back into the closet in nursing homes, then there still is a place for the COC."