The Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics reports today on the state of queer couples in The Netherlands. It states that, in The Netherlands, there are almost 53,000 couples of the same sex living together: 29,000 gay male couples and 24,000 lesbian couples.
That 53,000, by the way, represents more than 1% of all couples living together in The Netherlands. Most of the couples simply live together (perhaps with some form of legal agreement, the research doesn’t make it clear). Just over 5,000 couples have a "registered partnership", while about 6,000 have a full civil marriage. Thus, taken together, the percentage that have entered into a partnership bound by civil law is almost a quarter.
About 9 percent of gay couples have one or more children – often from a previous relationship. Just one percent of the gay male couples have children; 18 percent of the lesbian couples have children.
About a quarter of the gay couples live in one of the four largest cities in The Netherlands (Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht). That still leaves 75% who live outside of these cities. We’ll be one of those, and even more so when we go to live in the middle of nowhere in Gelderland next April.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 
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