Edward Brongersma

Edward Brongersma (31 August 1911 in Haarlem, Netherlands – 22 April 1998 in Bloemendaal/Overveen, Netherlands) was a Dutch politician and doctor of law. For a number of years he was a member of the Dutch Senate for the Labour Party, and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was primarily known as a defender of the rights of paedophiles and an advocate of more lax legislation on public morality.

Brongersma was born in Haarlem as the son of an ophthalmologist. He studied law at the University of Amsterdam (1931–1935) and obtained his degree in 1935. From 1935 to 1937 he was associated with a law firm in Haarlem while working on his doctoral dissertation on the Portuguese constitution of 1933 and Portuguese corporatism of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, whom he much admired at the time. In 1940 he received his Doctor of Law degree cum laude from the Catholic University of Nijmegen. His dissertation, on the subject of the corporative state in Portugal, was published as a book and was reprinted several times.

After World War II he quickly made a career for himself as a lawyer and politician as well as a prolific writer. He worked as an attorney in Amsterdam from 1940 to 1950, and between 1946 and 1950 he was active within the editorial board of the Dutch journal for the legal profession, Nederlands Juristenblad. In 1946, he was elected to the Dutch Senate for the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA); his term lasted from 1946 to 1950 and later he had a second term, from 1963 to 1977. In the same period (1946–1950), he was a member for the Dutch Labour Party of the Provincial States of North Holland and served on the town council of Heemstede.

His career was abruptly interrupted in 1950, when he was arrested for having sexual relations with a 17-year-old male. At the time, the age of consent for homosexual contacts was 21, based on article 248bis Dutch Criminal Code. The conviction of Brongersma resulted in 11 months imprisonment.

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