In the 1990s, the gay world further diversified. The street culture of public toilets moved from the inner city to parks and highway stops outside the city. The gay world proliferated and saw the emergence of various fetish-based subcultures, such as skinheads and leather devotees, and transgender communities. Ethnic minorities strongly contributed to diversity.

Sponsor Message.

As the millennium loomed, all major political parties included representatives who were openly gay or lesbian. This set the stage for further political gains.

Most remarkable was the emergence of the right-wing leader Pim Fortuyn, who was very openly gay. He even discussed in the media the taste of sperm and the pleasures of dark rooms. His sudden rise to political stardom ended abruptly on May 6, 2002, when he was murdered just before the elections that brought his party 17% of the vote.

In 1993, an Equal Rights Law was enacted protecting homosexuals, among other groups, from discrimination. In 1998, gay and lesbian relationships were legally acknowledged. In 2001, gay and lesbian couples were offered the option of marriage, an option that included the right of adoption.

The disappearance of legal discrimination against gay men and lesbians had an unexpected consequence. It made most Dutch think that the struggle for homosexual emancipation was over and the COC could close its doors. Indeed, the most important queer political organizations declined in the 1980s and have not seen a resurgence.

But the end of legal discrimination did not mean the end of social discrimination. Orthodox Christian and Muslim leaders, representing a minority of about 10% of the population, continue to denounce homosexuals. The most common insult on schoolyards remains "flikker" (faggot).

A growing puritanism not only affects the world of sex work and public eroticism, but also gay and lesbian culture. Nowadays there are fewer teachers and students who dare to come out in schools than a decade ago.

As is so often the case, lesbians are even less visible than gay men, who have a more lively public culture, produce more journals, and get more media attention. The successes of the past have led to a stagnation of sexual openness in the present and a denial of the discrimination that still exists.

Nevertheless, the successes of the Dutch emancipation movement have served as an inspiration to the international struggle for glbtq equality.

Famous as a major gay tourist destination and for its tolerance of glbtq people, in the second half of the twentieth century Amsterdam became a leader in the struggle for glbtq equality.

The history of gay and lesbian literature in the Low Countries is rich and varied, reflecting the changing concepts of intimate relations between people of the same sex.

Attitudes toward gay and lesbian personnel in European militaries vary widely, from the acceptance of the Dutch to the laissez-faire policy of the French to the rejection of the Greek and Turkish forces.

Like most Scandinavian countries, Norway respects glbtq rights, and Norwegians are broadly tolerant of homosexuals.

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, intimate, exclusive, and often erotic romantic friendships between women were largely perceived as normal and socially acceptable.

Critics use the term male romantic friendship to describe strong attachments between men in works ranging from ancient epics and medieval romances to Renaissance plays, Gothic novels, westerns, and war movies.

Dutch friendship glasses, which were made on order to celebrate friendship in the eighteenth century, may also have covertly celebrated same-sex sexual desire; one surviving friendship glass celebrates sodomitical pleasure.

Openly gay Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, who was assassinated in 2003, was in the political spotlight for only a few months, yet he managed to change the modern Netherlands.

German-born Magnus Hirschfeld deserves recognition as a significant theorist of sexuality and the most prominent advocate of homosexual emancipation of his time.

Amsterdam's Homomonument is one of the world's foremost public memorials acknowledging the persecution endured by gay men and lesbians during World War II and throughout history.

Paragraph 175 was the German law prohibiting sex between men; strengthened by the Nazis, it was the statue under which homosexuals were sent to concentration camps.

Among Greek writers on homosexual themes, Plato is preeminent not only as a major philosopher but also as the greatest master of Greek prose.