With the hoisting of a new rainbow flag, the COC Eindhoven protested Saturday afternoon against the anti-gay violence of football supporters a week ago. An action that fits in with the long history of peaceful actions for gay emancipation in the city. The highlight was the Pink Triangle, which in the late 1970s ensured that gays dared to be heard and seen.
With the establishment of the Eindhoven branch of the Pink Triangle, a branch of the COC, the acceptance of gays had to be given a boost again. That was badly needed, Ad van Oostrum said earlier in the documentary ‘Between repression and provocation’. He was there at the very first meeting.
“The turnout that evening was massive,” recalls Ad. “Apparently many people felt the need to let go of that dozed off COC and stand up for our rights.”
The name of the group was not chosen randomly. The pink triangle was also the marking pinned on gays in concentration camps during World War II. “With that symbol we went on the barricades. Not so much as homosexuals, but really as activist faggots.”
“We were all on the market together. That was mainly a lot of lovemaking and kissing.”
The members of the Pink Triangle did this in different ways. In February 1979, for example, a festival was organized in the Effenaar pop venue. Ad has the honor of providing the programming for this. “We had bands like Tedje & De Flikkers, but also a wide variety of other types of entertainment. And of course we drank a good glass.”
Perhaps even more famous were the special kisses. “Then we were all on the market together,” Joop Keesmaat looks back in the documentary. He was one of the initiators of the Pink Triangle in Eindhoven. “That was mainly a lot of lovemaking and kissing. How people reacted to that? Sometimes sympathetic, but often also bewildered.”
Peter Klaver also remembers that not all reactions were equally positive. “Bad remarks were made. I couldn’t stand that. Dirty faggots, perverts… Actually, the things that are still being shouted now. Time hasn’t changed that much in that regard. The vocabulary of those kinds of people isn’t that wide.”
“On the way, some were so nervous that we stopped to puke.”
One of the biggest actions was the one in January 1979. After Bishop Jo Gijsen made a number of homophobic statements, the members of the Pink Triangle decided to go to the Bishop’s Palace in Roermond to hang the facade full of posters. “On the way there, some of us were so nervous that we stopped to puke.”
These are just a small selection of all the actions that the activist COC split launched in those years. And although the events of a week ago in Eindhoven show that the battle is still not completely over, former Pink Triangle member Peter Jacobs is proud of what has been achieved in that period.
“There will always be people who have extreme ideas and cannot accept us,” says Jacobs. “But what we do have now are straight people who stand up for our rights. We didn’t have that in my time. We just won that.”
Curious about the full documentary about the Pink Triangle? Watch below Between repression and provocation: about gay activism in Eindhoven.
Waiting for privacy settings…
READ ALSO: Rainbow flag hangs again after homophobic violence: ‘Love is the answer’