Queer little Belgium

This week, Ghent University Hospital, Belgium’s main hospital for sex reassignment operations, announced that it saw a 30% increase in the number of sex changes performed in 2014 compared to the year prior. Many attribute this surge to changing public attitudes towards and greater acceptance of transgender people, influenced largely by the increasing number of “trans” people being represented on television and in film, such as in the Eurovision Song Contest and the popular television series Orange is the New Black.

If you identify as queer – without getting too academic, let’s just take that as gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, transgender or anything between or beyond these – Belgium has long been a pretty cushy place to live. Few countries offer better legal protection, the society is generally accepting of non-hetero-normative couples and family structures, and all of the major cities have a vibrant community to welcome you.

As a queer person living in Belgium, here is a brief run-down of what rights you hold, what rights you don’t and what you can expect from queer Belgium.

A political paradise
Politics and paradise aren’t often used in the same sentence when talking about Belgium, but when it comes to legal protections for queer persons, Belgium is about as good as it gets.

ILGA, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans- and Intersex Association, rates the country as 78% gay-friendly according to a 2014 study that looked at political and civil rights.

What would become Belgium decriminalised homosexuality back in 1795, and was one of the earliest modern United Nations member states to do so. By comparison, The Netherlands didn’t fully decriminalise it till 1811, the UK till 1982, and the US till more than 200 years later in 2003.

In 2003, same-sex couples were afforded the right to marry in Belgium and a strong web of anti-discrimination laws in areas of employment, the provision of goods and service and social and cultural discrimination went into effect.

Queer people can serve in the military, same-sex couples can adopt children and transsexual persons have the right to legally change their names and gender. Lesbians also have access to affordable in vitro fertilisation, the same as heterosexual women. And on the first of this year, the law changed to allow parenthood to be assigned automatically to spouses in same-sex couples, so spouses no longer have to petition the court for legal parenthood.

A climate of acceptance

Culturally, too, Belgium is largely a welcoming place for queer-identifying people. Several of its notable politicians have identified as gay, including the former Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo, and all of its major cities have “gay streets” or neighbourhoods with bars oriented towards the non-heterosexuals among us. In Brussels the main drag is the Rue du Marché au Charbon, with popular queer-friendly bars such as Le Dolores, Le Fontainas and the wonderfully irreverent drag cabaret Chez Maman on and nearby it.

There are also organisations and events throughout the year in which you can take part. This year the Pride Festival runs from May 3 to May 18 in Brussels. In November, there will also be the Pink Screens film festival, which aims to “promote alternative sexuality and gender”, according to their website. It is held at Cinema Nova, Cinema Aventure and Bozar. 

If you’re interested in getting involved in LGBTQ activism, The Rainbowhouse (La Maison Arc-en-ciel) is a great place to start. This organisation does everything from organising parties and running a bar to providing information about social, psychological and medical services for the queer community.

Still room for improvement

Despite a good track record, anti-queer discrimination has not been entirely eradicated from Belgium. Men who have sex with men are still prohibited from giving blood, for example.

The country has also experienced its share of anti-gay hate crimes over the last years. In 2012, Ihsane Jarfi disappeared from a Liege gay bar and was found dead a week later in a field outside of the city. Four people were convicted of the murder and found to have acted out of homophobic malice according to the 2003 laws protecting people from hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation.

Partly in response to Jarfi’s death, Bashing was created, a mobile application that lets people report incidents of homophobic or anti-queer behaviour or violence. The Belgian government and queer rights organisations have used this information to get a size of the scope of and trends behind the problem of homophobia.

Photo courtesy The Belgian Pride