in 2007, he received death threats after supporting the idea of including a boat for adolescents at the amsterdam gay pride. in 2014, hekma co-created a petition addressed to the supreme court of the netherlands, pleading the dutch supreme court to not ban pro-pedophilia association vereniging martijn. his support of martijn resulted in death threats and an attempted burglary. hekma has stated he is not a pedophile. he and his significant other, sociologist mattias duyves (1953), have been together for more than forty years. they met in 1977 and married in 2007. both champion sexual and relational freedom.