Date: Fri, 13 May 94 17:34:31 GMT From: Mattias Duyves STATEMENT EUROPRIDE AMSTERDAM 1994, What's at stake? Look: 1994, AMSTERDAM, EUROPRIDE, "the Dutch way of gay" -- what's it all about?! Listen: it's all quite clear... 15 through 25 June the Amsterdam event EUROPRIDE pulls visitors from all around Europe together in a public celebration of gay and lesbian benefits. In Amsterdam, one of the cross- roads of gaylesbian culture in the world, EUROPRIDE celebrates the impact of sexual preferences on daily life in Europe and Amsterdam. EUROPRIDE focuses on radical respect for sexual preferences as one of the human purposes of European culture. EUROPRIDE hails sexual orientation as a human condition which should favour individuality and diversity in modern Europe. Sexual preferences are not simply a secret source that guides genitals, sex and gender, but also a shared resource which results in social space, lifestyle, community, culture and communication. Sexual orientation is not only a sexual dimension that structures our intimacy and our privacy - in addition it is a dimension of public culture, which adds to the improvement and diversification of human welfare in Europe. EUROPRIDE celebrates cultivation of sexual preferences as a public cause, in support of Europe's cultural identity. EUROPRIDE promotes loud and clear the idea, that protection and expression of sexual orientation should be at the core of Europe's rising identity. Because, in the end, such respect will broaden social justice, cultural diversity and human communication for the sake of every person, in every community, on every continent. Public diversity inspired by sexual values is a major cornerstone both for local urban culture in Amsterdam, for modern civilization in Europe and for a global outlook in the making. Respect and diversity of sexual values, both in private and public, lead the way to Europe's advanced gender order, expressing a growing variety of moments, memberships, identities, scenes, lifestyles and communities based on one or another sexual orientation. Respect for the real variety of sexual preferences is indeed one of the great authentic European intentions from the twentieth century that shapes our times, our bodies, our souls. EUROPRIDE's Dutch way of being gay suggests a way for Amsterdam and Europe. Europe's beginning cultivation of private desire and public diversity is an important but delicate step ahead for straights, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, pedosexuals, transsexuals and other queers alike. Important, because diversity is a powerful human resource against isolation and disorientation. Delicate, because for many Europeans, after all, diversity of desire is difficult to imagine in concrete ways. While visible evidence of gay and lesbian life in public is still hard to accept for many straight men and women, for gays and lesbians in most parts of Europe it is even harder to express. To say it nicely, Eros' shape has not yet fully unveiled a satisfying Euroshape. Even when lifestyles related to opposing sexual orientations slowly are valued all equal, gaylesbian culture is often viewed as spurious or superfluous by both straights and queers. A judgment that EUROPRIDE considers a major source of EuroSHAME. Only in a few places in Europe, respect for the diversities of desire has resulted in gaylesbian social space and public presence. The earliest public forms of a gay life in the Netherlands date back up to 300 years ago. The very first public claim by gay and lesbians dates from 1969. Students from Amsterdam protested in front of the Parliament in The Hague against official discrimination of homosexual relations. In Amsterdam, on Dam Square they opposed police-officers and mariners who tried to stop openly gay and lesbian participation in the public commemoration of the Dutch war victims. Today, more than 250 years after the first evidence of gay life in Amsterdam and 25 years after major gaylesbian breakthroughs in the social revolution of the sixties, the gay community in Amsterdam is definitely not one of the biggest in Europe but positively one of the best. Public cultivation of sexual orientation is a central fragment of the local taste for tolerance. In Amsterdam, conflicting lifestyles find themselves with equal legitimacy and diversity. Amsterdam today offers lesbians, gays and other queers in miniature what it eventually hopes to share with the whole of Europe. In Amsterdam, space and respect for sexual preferences have reached the impact which enables Amsterdam to host EUROPRIDE 1994 in praise of desire's diversity. EUROPRIDE shows a type and degree of gaylesbian life to which there is rarely a parallel in other circumstances. For ten days, EUROPRIDE puts the relationships between gay Amsterdam and gay Europe on a pinnacle. EUROPRIDE challenges inhabitants and visitors to discover the benefits of Europe's gaylesbian culture; to discover its potential for a public culture of diversity and desire in Europe. That is, EUROPRIDE AMSTERDAM 1994 suggests the Dutch way of gay and welcomes you all. END OF STATEMENT EUROPRIDE AMSTERDAM 1994. Please note: Summary of program, locations and other details of Europride Amsterdam 1994 will be released next week for gaynetters and euroqueer-netters.