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Is Europe ahead of the US on LGBT rights?

On the whole, not really. 11 European countries constitutionally ban same-sex marriage for example, and less than half the countries offer any sort of legal recognition for same-sex couples.

Of course the problem when talking about 'Europe' is that you have a very wide spectrum of opinions. For every country that is ahead of the US on LGBT rights you have another that is very far behind.

Yes, the EU is ahead, but just like every other part of the future it is unevenly distributed.

Some country in Europe will pioneer a concept, others will follow, some faster some slower. The US usually catches on long after the concept has already become normal in a fair chunk of the EU.

As for your constitution, America gets it right on paper, but in practice God (the Christian one) is all over American politics, whereas even in Ireland it seems to be less of a day-to-day influence.

So really you mean the Netherlands are ahead of the US in LGBT rights. I'm curious about what else the US should be doing. How is the Netherlands better?

How is the Netherlands better?

From a purely legal perspective not in any significant ways. However from a public opinion perspective the difference is more significant. Same sex marriage has ~90% approval rating in the Netherlands compare ~55% in US. I cannot imagine that those sorts of differences don't greatly affect the day-to-day reality living as a same sex couple.

Comparing the Netherlands to the entirety of the USA is just weird. What are the approval ratings in New York state for instance? That is closer in population to the Netherlands (and potentially more rural & thus more conservative but still likely closer).

On most day-to-day reality issues (for same sex couples or anyone else) local norms are probably much more important and I can assure you there are lots of parts the United States that have 90% approval rates for same sex marriage.

So if we are discounting the legal perspective (which just as a personal opinion, I wish the US federal law was more progressive), cherry-picking public opinion to match the more progressive parts of the sample seems like the US comes out about the same.

It is weird, and of course you're right, but to be fair: that's the question I asked. I'm setting the bar high for us. I'll be happy when we're as socially liberal as the most socially liberal country on the planet. :)

It goes much further than marriage, there is the whole decriminalization thing, which goes back to the 1930's in the case of some countries here.

As for how NL is 'better' than the US: It's a ridiculously small country and very densely populated so what works here would likely not work as well in places like Canada or the US, but as mentioned above I think coalition politics (het poldermodel) is an important part of making sure that minorities do not easily become the football of dominating majorities. Both large US parties would be considered right-wing here (roughly VVD), the US has no functional left which is a residue of the McCarthy years and the cold war. Somehow the US associates 'left' in politics with 'communism' and that has kept a very large chunk of the US population without representation.

In NL it is very hard to find any substantial chunk of the population without representation. We also don't jail 1% of our populace.

That said there is plenty of room for improvement, we still have corruption, racism, crime and so on at levels higher than what I'm comfortable with, and our government is excellent at wasting money, an area they are slowly improving on but in my opinion too slowly.

Sorry, of course there's a lot of things we could obviously be better at, things that NL is already far better about. I was asking specifically about LGBT rights.

Define "long after." Gay marriage became legal in France in 2014, the UK in 2014, the US in 2015, and is still not legal in Germany.

Abortion was legalized in the U.K. in 1967, abortion bans were made illegal in the US in 1973, in France and Germany in the mid 1970s.

Sure some Scandinavian country might be ahead in those issues, but if Vermont was a separate country the US still wouldn't be behind. Also, this is really a great example of why the EU is such a terrible idea.

It's also incorrect to assert Europe is more progressive on abortion. Europe's two largest countries, Germany and France, only permit abortion during the first trimester (12-14 weeks), and have mandatory counseling. Germany has a 3-day waiting period, and France had a one-week waiting period until last year.

The Supreme Court threw out Arkansas's 12-week abortion law earlier this year. Two states have 20-week bans, and those are being challenged. Almost all states are at 24 weeks, and most have no mandatory counseling or waiting periods.

And on same-sex marriage: it became legal in France only shortly before Ogberfell, and and is still not legal in Germany.

Germany also still has 'Kirchensteur', you'd almost think the two have something to do with each other, after all, a country where the government will happily collect the tithe for churches quite possibly has a large religious influence on its politics.

Some other countries also still have this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax

And the sooner it dies out the better.

Europe might be more progressive on abortion. Ever notice the rhetoric on the "rare" part of "safe, legal and rare" is entirely limited to preventing unwanted pregnancies? Presumably abortions should be rare because they are intrinsically bad in some way. We use the tax system to influence all kind of behaviors, many of them health related, but we're not willing to use the tax system to make abortions more rare...

Using the tax system to discourage abortions must be the worst idea I ever heard.

Why? We discourage smoking with the tax system. And I'm not talking about a regressive tax, like on smoking. It can be purely for rich healthy women.

If abortion should be rare, than why not tax it.

Abortion should be rare the same way that heart surgery should be rare: not by stoping people from having one when they need it, but by preventing the unwanted condition (unwanted pregnancy, heart disease) in the first place.

People who say that abortion should be rare aren't saying that the procedure itself is bad. They're saying that unwanted pregnancies are bad.

Wow! I always thought the "rare" part was added because what happens to the fetus is, let's say, unsavory. Now I see it's one of those genius phrases where you can read your own feelings into it.

Whatever your feelings about it are, you can safely assume that most people who say "safe, legal, and rare" are saying that the state should have no role at all in women's reproductive choices. It's a pro-choice slogan, coined by pro-choice activists.

I think we're all a lot better off not getting any further into the details on this.

I don't think a purely legal view is a sensible way to look at this. In much of Europe, abortion is not a major political issue that motivates the voting patterns of a significant chunk of the electorate and hasn't been for a long time. In that sense, Europe is more progressive on women's reproductive rights.

That's a strange way to present the argument. In the early 1800s the electorate of the US South was unified in support of slavery. Not a motivating political issue. I would not say the south was particularly progressive on the issue of slavery.

You're reading what I wrote as some sort of weird 'therefore, Socrates was a cat' syllogism. Was the point I was trying to make unclear? Because I don't see how your analogy is at all related or even much of an analogy.

I don't see how "people don't care" -> "they are progressive". The logic of that escapes me.

FWIW my reading of your comment was the same as tedunangst's. Perhaps you meant something different from what you wrote?

>Is Europe ahead of the US on LGBT rights? Marriage equality is the law of the land in all 50 states here.

Europe got their through politics, US through courts. How long do you think that would take if it was left up to politicians?