Sex, Drugs and Changing Times in Amsterdam

Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 01.07.08 | 12:37 PM ET

During my one visit to Amsterdam years ago, I strolled through the red-light district and into a couple of the city’s famous coffee houses, dutifully playing the part of the gawking tourist. Since then, I’ve always taken a little comfort in the fact that such a place can exist—that an extremely tolerant, live-and-let-live society can actually function, albeit with a certain number of associated problems. So it’s sad to read that, as the Los Angeles Times puts it, “it may be last call for drugs, sex and live-and-let-live in the Netherlands, one of the most famously broad-minded countries in the world.” The Times notes that a ban on hallucinogenic mushrooms taking effect this year is representative of a more conservative mood driving changes in Dutch laws and society.

Writes Geraldine Baum:

The killings of maverick populist politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and filmmaker Theo Van Gogh two years later, both of whom fanned fears of Islamic extremism, have traumatized this predominantly white, Christian country.

The outward-looking Dutch welcomed the newcomers—and their mosques and Islamic schools—but have grown less tolerant toward those who don’t share their brand of tolerance. And they’re also asking themselves why they’re inviting tourists to get stoned in their parks and allowing graceful neighborhoods to devolve into lurid Disneylands with sex clubs and massage parlors.

The report brings to mind Ian Buruma’s troubling 2005 New Yorker story about Van Gogh’s murder. Wrote Buruma about the changes wrought by the assassination: “Conservatives, who had warned for many years that Muslim immigration would cause problems, found new allies among former leftists. And liberals, such as Job Cohen, who had promoted tolerance and multiculturalism were denounced as irresponsible softies.”

Perhaps if I lived in Amsterdam, I, too, would be eager to see tighter laws around prostitution and drugs. I don’t know. What’s most saddening to me, really, is that this outward-looking nation is turning inward, and that for some, fear has replaced tolerance. Reminds me of a country I know well.

Photo by cvander via Flickr, (Creative Commons).