And funnily enough, Flanders is quite economically rightwing and quite nationalist/anti immigration, but it's probably the more socially liberal half of Belgium. Belgian politics aren't straightforward in terms of comparisons.
A good example is the vote for legalizing gay marriage here with French-speaking liberals voting mostly against, while Flemish christian democrats and what would later become the Flemish conservatives mostly voting in favour of gay marriage, making us the second nation worldwide to legalize gay marriage back in 2003.
History
In the late 1990s, gay rights organisations in Belgium lobbied for the legalization of same-sex marriage. Belgian civil law did not explicitly require that two people be of opposite gender to be able to marry, as this was considered self-evident. Private member's bills in the 1990s by Flemish Block senators to add this as an explicit requirement were never considered.[3][4]
Verhofstadt Government
The election programmes of the SP (Flemish Social Democrats), Agalev (Flemish Greens) and VLD (Flemish Liberals) for the 13 June 1999 elections included the aim to legalise same-sex marriage. The new Verhofstadt I Government was formed, which was notably made up of a coalition of liberal, socialist and green parties and excluded the long-dominant Christian Democrats, who lost the elections due to the Dioxin Affair. The coalition agreement included "implementing a full legal partnership scheme" as well as "immediately making the Act of 23 November 1998 enter into force", which had not been done yet.[5] A royal order signed on 14 December and published on 23 December 1999 made the law on statutory cohabitation go into effect on 1 January 2000.[6]
In 1999, the PS (French-speaking Social Democrats) and Ecolo (French-speaking Greens) also announced they agreed to legalise same-sex marriage. At that point, the only remaining party in government that opposed same-sex marriage was the French-speaking liberal PRL (later merged into MR), mainly because it was opposed to adoption rights for same-sex couples. PRL agreed not to block same-sex marriage if adoption rights were excluded. As the first same-sex marriage in the Netherlands was performed on 1 April 2001, the Belgian Government, mostly under the lead of Minister of Health Magda Aelvoet (Agalev), began considering it as well.[7][8] On 22 June, the Council of Ministers formally approved opening marriage to same-sex couples.[9] In September, the largest opposition party, the Christian People's Party (CVP), held a party convention where they rebranded into Christian Democratic & Flemish (CD&V), with a renewed party platform, including the aim to legalise same-sex marriage, put forward by their youth wing.
On 30 November 2001, however, the Council of State gave a negative legal opinion on the bill, saying that "marriage is defined as the union of a man and a woman".[10] LGBT organisations and government ministers criticised the opinion and said they would proceed with the legislation.[11] The Council of Ministers formally approved the government bill on 8 December 2001 and in second reading on 30 January 2002, and submitted it to the Chamber of Representatives on 14 March 2002, where it faced a Justice Committee overloaded with bills to consider.[12] In May 2002, the government bill was then withdrawn from the Chamber and instead introduced as a private member's bill (which does not require opinions by the Council of State) in the Senate by the group leaders of the majority parties, Jeannine Leduc (VLD), Philippe Mahoux (PS), Philippe Monfils (MR), Myriam Vanlerberghe (SP.A-Spirit), Marie Nagy (Ecolo) and Frans Lozie (Agalev).
As Minister Aelvoet resigned on 28 August 2002 and elections were to be held in June 2003, the fate of the bill was unclear. Some politicians also accused Philippe Monfils (MR) of deliberately stalling the bill.[13][14] Nevertheless, new momentum was gained at the start of the new parliamentary year in October 2002. The Senate Justice Committee held hearings and voted 11–4 to approve the bill. It passed in the full Senate on 28 November 2002, with 46 votes to 15 (and 4 abstentions), and on 30 January 2003 the bill passed the Chamber of Representatives by 91 votes to 22 (and 9 abstentions).[15][16][17][18] The Flemish Liberals and Democrats, Christian Democratic and Flemish, the (Francophone) Socialist Party, the (Flemish) Socialist Party, Ecolo, Agalev and the People's Union voted generally in favour except for several abstentions, whereas the Flemish Block and National Front voted against, the Humanist Democratic Centre voted against with several abstentions and the Reformist Movement voted mostly against.
