More gay organizations were formed besides the COC. Although the COC stayed the largest gay organization, it lost influence and focused more on politics. It developed more and more into a sort of gay-union. In the 1980s - the years when AIDS first became an issue - the Dutch government accepted the COC as a discussion partner on gay issues. Despite that, the introduction of same-sex marriage in the Netherlands has to be attributed mostly to the Gay Krant: until the mid-1990s the COC kept the position that marriage as an institution had to be rejected.