Sodomskie sekrety oberży Pod Wężem. Holenderska homoseksualność – od programów i pogardy, po akceptację i równość wobec prawa
Sodom’s Secrets in the Serpent’s Inn Dutch Homosexuality – From Pogroms and Contempt, to Acceptance and Equality Before the Law

Summary/Abstract: This article is a brief sketch of the history of homosexuals in the Netherlands, from the sixteenth century to the present day, set against the background of changing norms and determinants of tolerance. After some initial comments on the concept of “tolerance” in the Dutch context, the article presents a history of social attitudes in relation to gay men. It discusses historical terminology (“sodomy”, “the sin of Sodom”) and related problems of interpretation, focusing on pogroms against “sodomites” in the eighteenth-century Republic. It then presents the legal situation of homosexuals in the nineteenth century, after the introduction of the French Penal Code, and the first trends toward emancipation, which took place at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The last part of the article deals with the twentieth century, in which, after World War Two, there was a sudden change in relation to “non-standard” sexuality, from the castration of gay men, to the birth of Dutch organizations fighting for the rights of LGBT people and, finally, to changes in legislation. It also suggests the reasons that allowed for such a diametrical change in just 30 years.

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