I was talking about homosexuality... which isn't quite as accepted here as in European countries. But you are right.
Homosexuality is not "accepted" in France anywhere near the way it is accepted in America, at least here in New York.
In both places, there is a homosexual community which is out in the open. In both places, the community feigns tolerance. However, Americans actually ENFORCE tolerance, with laws, and Americans, in private, are furtive about ridiculing homosexuals. The French ridicule homosexuals. They do so in private, and they do so in lines of command too. There is formal legal tolerance, but in America there is always a court to run to to punish someone who makes you feel bad. In France, there isn't. Somebody ridicules you, well, that's just too damned bad. Sue? How.
I often say that Americans have made an idol out of the law and worship it. It is surprising the extent to which the deep reach of the law - the threat of the lawsuit - reaches into the most private recesses of life and causes Americans to be very guarded. In the French legal system, it is damned hard to sue anybody, and there are only judges, no juries. Result: you ridicule a homosexual, and he goes home sobbing, and THAT'S IT. He can't sue. There is no RECOURSE to big daddy judge, like there is in America. The party whose feelings are hurt cannot go grab the law. It doesn't work.
And THAT, in the final analysis, is REALLY the key difference between America and Continental Europe. In America, if somebody gets made enough there are lawyers who will take cases on contingency fees and rush into court for anything, relying on sensationalism and emotional manipulation of the facts before a jury. The threat of a lawsuit pervades life in America; everything is predicated on not political correctness but LEGAL correctness, lest someone get sued. In Continental Europe, it's basically impossible to sue anybody unless he physically harms you, badly, and even then the contingency fee is illegal, so you have to pay for your own lawyer. There's no jury to be manipulated; just a panel of judges.
If I had to put my finger on one thing that makes all the difference between the two countries, it is that any loud and vitriolic dispute in America can end in a lawsuit, and probably will. In Continental Europe, it can't, and won't, and doesn't. Net result, a lot more fistfights in Europe, actually, and a lot less politeness. In Europe, people TOLERATE the gays, and mock them. In America, people used to do that, but are now afraid of lawsuits if they even mock them, and so employers have cracked down, and everyone watches what he says.
Homosexuality is more silently acquiesced to in America than it is in France. In America, the sole place where one can object to it is on the narrowly defined stage of political speech. And so the politics of homosexuality are highblown in the USA.
In France, people tolerate it, and make fun of it (like they USED to in America, before all the lawsuits). And that's the key difference, in America, the gays got offended, got legal aid, and sued. Now everybody walks on eggshells. In France and the rest of the Continent, the gay that gets offended goes home and sobs himself to sleep in his pillow, because he cannot turn to the law to give him power to silence others. There is no LEGAL recourse that is effective, at least not yet.
England is different, because the English have the same legal system as the Americans, and thus every pantywaist ninny who feels OFFENDED can get his day in court. And that is a very bad way to run a country, because it's through the legal system that the one-percenters have managed to silence everybody in America and England.
In France? Most people don't CARE about homosexuals. Sexual perversions are treated with a bored tolerance, and made fun of. If you ever find yourself in Paris, and find yourself in an area with Orthodox Jews in black hats walking down the same streets with leather-clad gays, you have found the old Jewish/new gay quarter - Le Marais.
If you listen carefully as you walk through, you will hear an awful lot of English spoken. The national joke in America is that the French are cheese-eating surrender monkeys. The national conviction in France is that Anglo-Saxons are all closeted gays, and that English men and women become completely indistinguishable from one another after the age of 45. Elton John and Boy George are exhibit A. It is a mystery, to the French, that the English manage to reproduce.
And tolerance? Well, the former French Prime Minister, Edith Cresson, outright said at a press conference that she didn't like in in London because the men didn't look at her, 'because they're all gay, you know'.
I think that the language barrier between the two worlds makes it hard for each other to REALLY see what the other is like. But no, Europeans are really not more ACCEPTING of gays. They simply view sexual perversion with a sort of bored aristocrat's tolerance.
Because of the lack of lawsuits, French conversations are far more frankly racial than American conversations are. Because Americans are AFRAID to speak freely, and rightly so. The French are not, because there is nothing particularly to be afraid OF.
Politics is more important in America, because it's the only place where people are permitted to fully express controversial thoughts without fear of a lawsuit.