Is gay life better in Europe? An openly antigay president wins his second term. Voters OK a dozen statewide marriage bans. Gays feeling unwanted in the USA may be looking for utopia overseas. Here's a reality check from gay Europeans themselves.

Phil Sorensen and his partner of 20 years, Christopher Staker, waited a long time and traveled a long way to be married. But on October 9 in the ornately appointed town hall of Enghien, Belgium, they realized their dream in a simple ceremony officiated by the mayor and attended by family and friends from around the world. Had they been standing in a city hall in their native United States, the scene might have caused a stir, drawing out the media along with criticism from religious conservatives. But in this predominantly Catholic nation in northern Europe, it hardly turns a head. In fact, few of at least 300 gay and lesbian weddings that have taken place since Belgium began allowing them over a year and a half ago have drawn any attention at all.

"Belgium is truly a humane country," Sorensen says. "People allow other people to exist as they are. The attitude toward gay rights is, it's a nonissue. And it's the first time in my life I feel as though I have a real home."

Sorensen and Staker, who sold their house in New Hampshire and, after a year in Germany, moved to Belgium in 1997 in search of a better life, were taking advantage of the latest in a long list of pro-gay changes in Belgium. On October 1 the country amended its same-sex marriage law to include noncitizen gay couples if they can prove they are prohibited from marrying in their own country. Sorensen, 46, and Staker, 49, who both work as health directors for NATO, were the first U.S. gay couple to get married there.

Around the same time, Pedro Etchegaray was celebrating positive changes hi his native Spain. The ruling Socialist Party, on October 1 passed a measure to make Spain the third nation in the world behind Belgium and the Netherlands to provide marriage rights to same-sex couples. The bill is expected to pass parliament and become law early next year. "I feel overjoyed," says the 31-year-old openly gay print journalist and television producer, who lives in Barcelona. "Not even in my more optimistic dreams would I have imagined that Spain was going to open civil marriage to gays and lesbians."

At a time when the United States is in some ways moving backward on the gay rights front, much of Europe has in recent years accelerated its march toward equality. Even people like Etchegaray, who live in traditionally Catholic countries, are boasting about enormous progress. Gays and lesbians are depicted positively in the media. They are out in their careers and affectionate with their partners in public. And their governments are catching on. In addition to Belgium and the Netherlands, 13 other countries in Europe currently provide some type of nationwide legal recognition for same-sex couples: Croatia, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany, Luxembourg, France, Iceland, Portugal, Scotland, and Hungary. England's groundbreaking Civil Partnership Bill, which is currently in parliament and would provide gay couples with almost all the rights and protections of marriage, is also expected to pass next year.

So would American gays be better off living in Europe? "It's not easy to answers that question," says Riccardo Gottardi, 27, cochair for the European region of the International Lesbian and Gay Association, a gay rights organization. "If we compare the Netherlands to the Bible Belt, we certainly get the impression that Europe is a much better place for gay and lesbian people than the U.S. At the same time, if we look at San Francisco, there is no place in Europe with so many gay people in the same area."

As in the United States, it depends a lot on where you are, Gottardi says. The rural areas of many European nations have a long way to go to catch up to their urban counterparts when it comes to gay issues. Due to a number of cultural and religious factors. countries in Eastern Europe are not nearly as gay-friendly as those in Western Europe, "and it makes a difference to consider the European Union [apart from] the rest of the continent," Gottardi says.

Indeed, an increasingly pro-gay stance among many European Union leaders is setting much of Europe apart from the rest of the world. Member nations that don't provide protections for their gay citizens are being pressured to do so. Two lawsuits are before the European Court asking that same-sex marriages be recognized across the European Union. And nations petitioning to join the European Union are being asked to fall in line, beginning with workplace equality. "In 2000 we obtained an E.U. Directive establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment that Includes sexual orientation," Gottardi says, noting that the directive has yet to be implemented in all 25 member nations. "For its scope, this is the most important single piece of legislation in gay and lesbian history. It will give a basic protection from discrimination to 450 million citizens."

Such progress may largely be due to the different role religion plays in European society. Compared with the United States, far fewer people in Western Europe claim to be deeply religious, and most nations don't allow religious beliefs to dictate policy, even in those where the church is sponsored by the state. "Everybody can have his own idea about something, but in the public sphere [in France] you are not Catholic, you are not Muslim," says Frederic Martel, author of The Pink and the Black: Homosexuals in France Since 1968. "When legislation is in favor of gay rights, it is very difficult for a religious group to oppose it."

The same is true in Spain, where over 80% of the people claim to be Roman Catholic. "Contrary to what the cliche dictates, religion plays only a little role in modern Spain," Etchegaray says. "The state is assuming its secularity. The Catholic Church is receiving less money from government. And it is not a big deal."

That trend was bolstered by the Socialist Party taking power last March and distancing itself from the church, says openly gay Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar. "The church is furious," he says. "When the Socialist government agreed to treat same-sex unions as the equal [of heterosexual marriage, it made the church go crazy. So now they're waging campaigns, trying to rally the faithful to vote them out of office. But I think progress is unstoppable at this point. And I think that Spain is taking the lead on giving rights to gays, and it's going to have an impact throughout Europe."

There is still organized opposition, Martel says, but it's waning. Right before France passed its civil unions law in 1999, various estimates found that between one third and just over half of the nation's mayors signed a petition against it; also, over 100,000 people took pail in one protest. "It was a big fight, but we were willing to compromise," Martel says, noting that the initial version of the law did not provide many key tax and inheritance rights, some of which have since been added. "Now the polls show that 80% of the population agrees with this legislation."

Paris resident Xavier Heraud, 24, a native Frenchman who is an activist for the Paris chapter of ACT UP and journalist for gay French national magazine Tetu, says his city has become the most gay friendly place on earth. Heraud, who produces and and DJs for a monthly gay and lesbian dance party at a Paris club, says France has changed a lot since the civil unions law took effect. Openly gay politicians have been elected, and business leaders have come out in support of gay rights. But that support still stops short of marriage. "Marriage is seen as very old-fashioned," Heraud says. "People--even in the gay community--still don't understand that we're talking about [full] equality, and marriage is part of it."

Neighboring Germany doesn't allow full gay marriage rights either, but what it does offer was enough to make Claudia Auffenberg-Luis, 32, and her 34-year-old partner of eight years, Lynnette Luis, happier than they were in the United States. In 2000, while they were living in the Santa Barbara, Calif., area, where Lynnette is from, Claudia's student visa ran out. So the couple packed up all their things, including their dog and cat, and moved to Bergheim, near Claudia's hometown of Cologne. Shortly after Germany established legal partnerships for gay and lesbian couples in August 2001, through a law that provides most of the rights of marriage, the couple were partnered. "It hasn't been the easiest living over here the past four years--learning a new language, adjusting to a new culture--but at least we are able to have rights as a gay couple and build a life together," Lynnette says.

The couple now live (and are opening a day spa) in Cologne, a gay-friendly town the locals refer to as "Frisco on the Rhine." "The entire debate that is going on in the U.S. about same sex marriage is really absurd to a lot of Germans," says Lynnette. "In regards to homosexuality, Germany is more progressive."

England, a country long considered to be most in line with American religious traditions and attitudes, is now far more like Germany and France when it comes to gay rights. But unlike their neighbors to the south, British gays and lesbians had to overcome a lot to get where they are. "France and Germany have never had antigay legislation," says David Allison, a spokesman for the British gay rights group OutRage! "France has never persecuted its gay people. But in England we've had a whole raft of antigay legislation. Just like in the United States, gay people have had to fight just for the fight to exist."

In recent years, however, that fight has proved successful. Since Tony Blair's Labour Party took power in 1997, a national antidiscrimination law covering sexual orientation has been enacted, gay immigration rights have progressed rapidly, the ban on gays in the military has been lifted, and the partnership bill has evolved.

But England is still playing catch-up in the European Union. In Scandinavia gays have been experiencing a revolution in equality for almost a decade. Sweden enacted a sweeping civil unions law in 1995. That same year Finland expanded its constitution to include antidiscrimination protections that covered gays, and in March 2002 the country implemented a partnership law that provides all the rights of marriage to gays except adoption. Hilkka Lyden, a 27-year old college student in Helsinki, will register with her Finnish partner, Iris Lainc, 33, around Christmas, but they plan to have a marriage ceremony next summer. "his and I usually walk hand in hand in the streets and are able to be affectionate to each other," she says. "There's no problem."

As in other European nations, Finland has a state-sponsored church--in this case Lutheran--but it wields little influence on lawmaking, which means greater freedom for gay people, Lyden says. "They say a lot, but they can't do anything. The church can't even discriminate against gay priests."

But gays and lesbians are still not completely equal, Lyden says. Single gays can adopt children, but same-sex couples cannot. And there's an overall sense among gay people that they are just being "tolerated." Being lesbian or gay "doesn't make your life harder," site says, "but it's still an issue."

Even in the Netherlands, renowned for its gay-friendly culture and for being the first nation in the world to provide full equality in marriage, there are signs that homosexuality is still an issue. Dutch school officials caused a stir in October when they dumped thousands of free copies of the gay-themed teen magazine Expreszo without allowing high school students to read them. The issue featured interviews with soap opera stars, a "tolerance test," and photos of gay couples kissing. One official from a religious high school was quoted as saying, "We don't want to educate our students with this sort of casual information."

Hugo Stienstra, a 32-year-old gay Dutch attorney for a national TV network, says religious opposition is relatively small in his country, but it is in creasing. "As more and more Muslims live in the Netherlands, tolerance toward gay" people has definitely decreased," he says. "This really is a big problem, which probably will become worse in the coming decades." But for now, Stienstra says, gay life is very good. Discrimination against gay and lesbian people is prohibited by law, most gays can be out in their careers, and in addition a huge annual gay pride event, there are several national "pink holidays" celebrating gay life and commemorating gay history. "Gays fit into Dutch culture as much as anything else," he says.

So much so that being gay has little significance, even for those in the public eye. "For me, it's normal," says Johan Kenkhuis, a Dutch Olympic swimmer who won the silver medal in the four-man 100-meter freestyle relay hi Athens [see sidebar, p. 44]. When Kenkhuis, who has been out to his family and teammates for many years, came out publicly in a newspaper interview earlier this year no one seemed to care. "I've never had any problems with it," he says. "When people ask about it I answer, and then they just change the subject."

In Belgium, Sorensen says, gays and lesbians are so overwhelmingly accepted that the mere idea of a "gay identity" is nonexistent. "We don't feel pressure to be lit some exclusive subculture," he says. "Gays do not seem to be rejected from society, so they do not congregate in gay ghettos. You go to a gay bar here and you'll find granny, the family, and whomever having a great time enjoying each other's company."

Sorensen and Staker say they have no intention of returning to the United States and plan to retire in the south of France. "I think the quality of life is better here by far," Sorensen says. "Being a gay person in Europe is a great experience."