Amsterdam sends a gay-marriage message to America

Job Cohen, the Mayor of Amsterdam and former Dutch minister of of Education, officiated over a monumental wedding of five gay Dutch and American couples. The marriage was celebrated as a message of the tine when the Pilgrims spent time in liberal Holland before boarding the Mayflower.

Equally interesting to SJ is that Mayor Cohen is, after all, a Cohen .. A Jew, and at leats by name, the descendent of the priesthood of Aaaron and the Jebusites.

In April 1st 2001 (another irony?) was the first public official to perform a ceremony unting a same sex couple. Later, he ran as the Labour Party's candidate for prime minister but was narrowly defeated and Cohen remained the mayor of Amsterdam. Time awarded Cohen the title "European Hero" in 2005, for his inclusive approach towards the Muslim community after the murder of Theo van Gough.

Some circles have no ends!

At Crosscut. Matt Fikse says "Watching the scene unfold in Amsterdam I was struck by the realization that America, mired in its tedious state-by-state skirmishes of the gay marriage wars, has managed to lose sight of one fundamental aspect of all marriages, be they gay or straight: the primacy of civil marriage over religious marriage. That fact has been part of America's cultural and legal history for more than 400 years, thanks to the Dutch. ....The custom of civil marriage as practiced in the Netherlands was so admired by the Pilgrims that they brought it to America. It is a hallmark of what would ultimately become America's radical and successful notion of separating Church and State.nals to get a glimpse of t