Yesterday Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen received an honorary Doctor of Common Laws degree from the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. Cohen received this distinction because he was the first mayor to perform a same-sex marriage in 2001. He had presided over the necessary legislation only months earlier while serving in the Ministry of Justice. In 2005, Cohen was named one of Time Magazine’s European Heroes for his position on the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist in November 2004. Cohen rallied the citizens of Amsterdam – Muslim and non-Muslim – to condemn the murder and called for unity and tolerance in the wake of the racial tensions that followed the incident. Led by Cohen, citizens of the traditionally liberal city protested in the streets in outrage over the attack and Cohen was credited with diffusing a situation ripe with racial and religious violence into one of dialogue and social progress.

(Link: rtl, University of Windsor)