Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten on Saturday urged young LGBT+ people to come out, telling them life gets better after taking the step, as Amsterdam hosted one of the centrepiece events of this year’s World Pride under heightened security.<\/p>\n
Coming out isn’t easy, Jetten said at the start of the city’s traditional Canal Parade, “but it actually only gets better once you’ve dared to take that step.”<\/p>\n
The 39-year-old is the Netherlands’ youngest and first openly gay prime minister.<\/p>\n
The parade of 80 brightly decorated boats through Amsterdam’s canals is one of the highlights of World Pride celebrations, which is being held in the Netherlands for the first time this year.<\/p>\n
Jetten described the event as a celebration of freedom and joy, but said it was also important to stand up against hostility towards the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and wider queer community.<\/p>\n
“We saw that with the attack in Berlin last week,” he said, according to Dutch news agency ANP, referring to the car-ramming attack on the German capital’s Pride parade that left one woman dead and 31 people injured.<\/p>\n
“Worldwide, LGBTQIA+ acceptance is under heavy pressure,” he said.<\/p>\n
Amsterdam tightened security for the multi-day World Pride festivities following the attack in Berlin.<\/p>\n
About 500,000 people were expected to attend the Canal Parade alone, according to organizers.<\/p>\n
Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema said police, prosecutors and city authorities were working closely together to secure all World Pride events.<\/p>\n
“I have confidence in all the measures we have taken,” she said, without giving further details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten on Saturday urged young LGBT+ people to come out, telling them life gets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[23,22580,22931,1020,16848],"class_list":["post-35422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-amsterdam","tag-amsterdam","tag-canal-parade","tag-duivenvoorde-castle","tag-rob-jetten","tag-world-pride"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}