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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (May 17, 2002)
i i I ■i news D utch C ourage Maverick gay leader Pirn Fortuyn assassinated by B o b R o e h r an d R e x W o c k n e r im Fortuyn, one of the worlds most prominent gay political leaders, was assassinated May 6 near Amsterdam, the Netherlands, just nine days prior to national elections. He had appeared on a radio program and was leaving the studio when an assailant pumped five bullets into his head and chest at close range. He died on the spot. Police captured Volkert van der Graaf short ly after the shooting and charged him with mur der. Published reports said the white 32-year-old is a Dutch national who is married, has a child and worked for Environmental Offensive, an animal rights and environmental group. Accord ing to media sources, van der Graaf might have been upset that Fortuyn favored lifting a ban on raising animals, such as mink, for their fur. This was the first political assassination in modem history for the Netherlands. Gay leaders are in shock. “It still feels totally unthinkable, and it feels like our democracy and our way of life have been deeply wounded,” veteran Dutch activist Grada Schadee said. “I was much against his political ideas, hut I deeply respected him on his openness [as a gay man]. He was so sharp in his debating techniques. He was serious yet also caused much laughter with the public.” Fortuyn’s (pronounced fore-TOWN) mete oric political rise had been highly controversial. Opponents tried to link his anti- Muslim immigrant position with the rise of neo-Nazi politicians in Austria and France, but he denied those asso ciations. His nonideological popular appeal seemed more closely akin to that of Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura. Fortuyn, 54, was a striking figure with his shaved head and well-tailored suits. He was a former professor of soci ology, an ex-Marxist now with a liber tarian bent, a political adviser and columnist before plunging into elective office, and a man of some wealth who strove to be the world’s first openly gay prime minister. He viewed the growing ghettos of Islamic fundamentalist immigrants as a threat to Dutch tolerance. “ You either loved him or you hated him,” said Hans “How can you respect a culture in Verhoeven, editor of the Amsterdam magazine Qay & Night which the woman has to walk several Marie] Le Pen,” he said April 8, referring to right- steps behind her man, has to stay in the kitchen wing politicians in Austria and France. “My poli and keep her mouth shut?” he said in a recent cies are multiethnic and certainly not racist.” interview. “For Muslims, as a homosexual, I am In the June issue of Partisan Review, U.S. less than a pig. I am proud that in the Nether lands I can come out for my homosexuality, and journalist Bruce Bawer writes of those Islamic fundamentalist communities, drawing upon his I’d like to keep it that way.” Many media outlets had dubbed Fortuyn a experience living in Amsterdam and Norway with his lover. He explains how they cling to right-winger, hut he disputed that. rural medieval traditions of Koran-based sexual “I find it intolerable that 1 am being compared morality where women are chattel and homo- with statesmen such as [Joerg] Haider and [Jean- WENTWORTH CHEVROLET sexuals are put to death. “If fundamentalist Mus lims in Europe do not carry out these punish ments, it is not because they’ve advanced beyond such thinking but because they don’t have the power,” he says. Bawer takes on those who defend fundamen talism in the name of tolerance. “Fundamental ist Islam is not a race or an ethnicity; it is an ide ology. Its critics are not racists, any more than critics of Nazi or Stalinist ideology were racists.” He sees it as a threat to concepts of equality and individual rights that are at the core of Western society. Fortuyn’s solution was for immigrants to learn to speak Dutch, accept secular law and integrate themselves into European society. Those who were not willing to do so would have to depart. He also reflected the frustration of a working class that did not see the government bureau cracy as responsive to their needs and a popula tion troubled by rising crime, which often seemed tied to immigrants. He rode those frus trations to political power, much as Ventura did four years ago. His newly established Pirn Fortuyn’s List party garnered 35 percent of the vote and con trol of the municipal government earlier this year in Rotterdam, the nation’s second largest city. Polls had his candidates drawing 15 per cent to 20 percent of the vote in national elec tions, which would have given them a leading role in forming the next government, as the Dutch political system is fragmented into sever al small parties, and coalition governments are the rule. The election will go forward. It is difficult to predict the effect Fortuyn’s assassination will have on its outcome. in T he J apanese G arden COME IN FOR A NO HASSLE PRICE! 611 SW KIN G STO N AVE. W A SH IN G T O N PARK 5O3.223.I52I W W W .3APANESEGARDEN.COM B r in g in t h is a crio r e c e iv e $1 OFF G E N E R A L A D M IS S I O N . O N E C O U PO N PER VISITOR. NO T V ALID W ITH A N Y OTHER DISCOUNTS. EXP. 12/01/02 N Elise Campbell, gri , abr IF W EHE NOT THE CHEAPEST.. It's that Sim ple! 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