Gay friendly police recruitment

I was in Amsterdam yesterday and the entire city was covered in posters recruiting new police officers. The posters featured photos of different people and the message that they could use some help.

The posters showed an Arab guy, a prostitute or a gay man, with the following slogans:

S/he needs your help…

Arab guy: …because he is being discriminated against
Prostitute: …because sometimes clients go too far
Gay man: …so he can walk hand in hand with his boyfriend

When I saw the last poster, I could not help but smile.

Amsterdam has always been a very gay friendly place, but the last few years it has seen an increase in so-called gay bashing. That, of course, is very sad and disappointing, and I was starting to get a little worried that maybe we were losing some of our tolerance.

To see that even the police are trying to promote that gay men should be able to walk hand in hand with their boyfriends, gives me hope that we as a nation haven’t lost all of our tolerance yet.

Of course, there are also many negative ways to look at this campaign, but I have decided to see it as a positive thing.