Samenvatting

The General Equal Treatment Law – adopted in 1994 – is a landmark in the history of homosexual emancipation in the Netherlands. It took two decades before the first proposals for a legal ban of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation would be transformed into law. Background of this controversy is the clash between the equalityprinciple and the freedom of education. The compromise reached – the so-called single fact-construction – however sent a double message: being gay was not a justified reason for unequal treatment, but some forms of behaviour were incorporated as a legal exception. It took another twenty years before this flaw in the law would be changed.
This article analyses the political debates behind these legal developments. What was the problem that the various drafts for this new legislation were supposed to solve? Which definitions of discrimination on the basis of homosexuality were used and how did they change over time? The adoption of the law and its ‘reparation’ twenty years later are mainly a question of symbolic politics. They reflect the development of the growing acceptance of homosexuality in Dutch society and have stimulated its further growth. Their actual legal effects seem far less important.