12/4 What Does the Ideal Look Like?

One of the main things that I will be including in the final draft of my paper is what I think the U.S. will look like in the future after these laws are enacted. For this, I decided to look towards a country with a reputation of being very LGBT friendly, with complete national legalization.

Given the fact that they were the first country to do this, and I have been there many times, I chose to look a little more in depth to The Netherlands. My dad is from there, and luckily for me, one of my uncles is a gay resident of Amsterdam. As such, he has been able to enlighten me as to how he is treated there.

It seems to be that for the Dutch, the treatment of gay people has completely shifted. Before 1973, they had considered homosexuality to be a mental illness. Now they boast one of the highest gay acceptance rates in the world (90%).

For them, religious "ideals" about preserving the stereotypical family unit are superseded by civil rights, and they made the realization that the law of the modern country they live in has to protect all people.