Dutch companies have been going all out to celebrate Amsterdam Pride, the celebration of the city’s gay and transgender community, which reaches its peak on Saturday with the traditional canal boat parade.

High street staple Hema has organised three same-sex marriages for couples who cannot tie the knot in their country of origin and is selling cream slices in rainbow colours.

Station snack bar Smullers has pink mayonnaise on offer, four Shell petrol stations have been transformed with rainbow hues and rainbow flags are flying all over the city.

The commercialisation of Pride, which first took place as Gay Pride in 1996, has irritated some activists. Companies pay €30,000 to operate a boat in the canal parade, which attracts some 500,000 people every year.

‘There are a lot of complaints in my circle about the way the boat parade has become commercialised since companies were able to take part,’ Utrecht University researcher and activist Linda Duits told the Financieele Dagblad.

However, Frits Huffnagel, chairman of the organising committee brushes off the criticism. ‘The event lasts nine days and it costs €1m to put on,’ he said. ‘That is not just for the boat parade, but for the Pride walk, the senior Pride, the trans Pride, the events on the Dam and on Rembrandtplein.’

Council

The city council contributes €250,000 towards the bill and the rest, Huffnagel says, has to be raised by the organisation itself.

Groningen University professor Bob Fennis told the NRC that companies are interested in Pride because of the money to be made from attaching their names to a good cause.

Everyone wants to be seen as supporting diversity and sending out a universal message and there are few risks, he said. ‘In mainstream Dutch society, homosexuality is almost entirely accepted,’ he said.

Pinkwashing

Nevertheless, some companies are being accused of pinkwashing and Hema’s Pride t-shirt range was actually produced in Bangladesh, where homosexuality is a crime.

‘Visibility, that is the painful issue for the gay community at the moment,’ Philip Tijsma, of the COC gay rights campaign group told the NRC. ‘People say they have nothing against homosexuality but two men kissing is seen as shocking.’

‘Every step towards visibility, whether from the government or companies, contributes to normalising homosexuality. There is no acceptance, without visibility.’