Coos Huijsen, Date of Birth, Place of Birth

    

Coos Huijsen

Dutch politician and writer

Date of Birth: 20-Mar-1939

Place of Birth: The Hague, County of Holland, Netherlands

Profession: writer, politician

Nationality: Kingdom of the Netherlands

Zodiac Sign: Pisces


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About Coos Huijsen

  • Coos (Jacobus) Huijsen (born March 20, 1939 in The Hague) is a Dutch historian, writer, former educator, former Dutch politician, and gay rights activist.
  • He was the first parliamentarian in the world (1976) to openly express his homosexuality.Huijsen who was a member of the Dutch House of Representatives in 1972–1973 and from 1976 to 1977.
  • In his first term in office, he was a member of the Christian Historical Union, which he left because the party would not support the left-leaning Den Uyl cabinet; in his second term, he sat as an independent member under his own banner of Groep-Huijsen.
  • As a member of the House of Representatives in 1976, Huijsen came out as gay, making him the country's first openly LGBT politician and the first known openly gay member of a national legislature in the world.
  • In 2016, Huijsen published an autobiographical account of his coming-out, in the context of a changing Dutch society in the 1970s: Homo Politicus.
  • De eerste parlementariër ter wereld die uit de kast kwam ("Homo Politicus.
  • The First MP Worldwide Who Came Out of the Closet" - autobiography)In this book, Huijsen describes how he participated in the Dutch gay rights movement in the years after his coming-out, when he co-founded the Foundation for Free Relationship Rights (Stichting Vrije Relatierechten).
  • The goal of this foundation was to make the gay community address the larger public and the political establishment, by appealing to their sense of humanity.
  • Gay rights were human rights, and, as such, were to be put on the political agenda.
  • It paved the way to legal equality for same-sex relationships, and, finally, in the introduction of same-sex marriage in the Netherlands (2001). After leaving parliament, Huijsen worked as a school teacher and director.
  • He also switched parties again, becoming a member of the Dutch Labour Party in which he was active until 2000; he left that party because he found the party put too little work into education and gay emancipation.
  • He then pursued a career as a historian, with a specific interest in the cultural-historical context of democracy.
  • His first book, Nog is links niet verloren ("The left is not yet lost"; 1982) described the widening gap between the elites of progressive political parties and their popular, traditional base.
  • Later, Huijsen wrote multiple books about the relations between the Dutch national narrative and the royal dynasty, the House of Orange, including: De oranjemythe, een postmodern phenomeen ("The Orange Myth, a postmodern phenomenon"), Beatrix: De kroon op de republiek ("Beatrix, crown on the republic"; 2005) and Nederland en het verhaal van Oranje ("The Netherlands and the story of Orange"; originally a PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2012).Huijsen is married and lives with his husband in Amsterdam.

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