Rights advocates have sounded the alarm in recent years as countries around the world have sought to curb LGBTQ+ rights.
Iraq now punishes same-sex relations and gender transition surgery with jail time. In the United States, the Human Rights Campaign issued a state of emergency – the first in the organization’s 40-year history – after an uptick in antigay and antitransgender bills hit in statehouses last year. Meanwhile, transphobic rhetoric surged among politicians in Europe.
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Tracking global LGBTQ+ rights is a complicated endeavor. The community continues to face diverse challenges, but overall, data shows a story of gradual, hard-won progress.
“The concern is real,” says Andrew Flores, who authored a UCLA report tracking global social acceptance of LGBTQ+ people. “Social change and policy change around LGBTQI rights is not a one-way ratchet, or always going to be expanding equality.”
Yet these alarming headlines are only half of the story.
Since 1980, some 56 countries have seen an increase in LGBTQ+ acceptance – and on average, those countries have progressed more than other countries have declined. That shift in attitude has allowed new rights and legal protections to be introduced around the world.
This progress can sometimes get lost in the noise.
“We have a negativity bias,” says Dr. Flores. “We focus on the bad things, and we tend to downplay the good things.”
When patrons of a now-famous New York City gay bar resisted a police raid 55 years ago, they catalyzed a rights movement that has spread far beyond the United States.
At the time of the Stonewall Uprising, same-sex relations were explicitly outlawed in all but one U.S. state. Today, millions of people attend annual Pride festivals in over 100 countries, and average public acceptance of LGBTQ+ people has risen globally since 1980, according to a report from the UCLA School of Law.
Yet advocates have sounded the alarm in recent years, as countries around the world have sought to curb LGBTQ+ rights. Iraq, for example, now punishes same-sex relations and gender transition surgery with jail time. The Human Rights Campaign, America’s largest LGBTQ+ rights group, issued a state of emergency – the first in the organization’s 40-year history – after an uptick in antigay and antitransgender bills hit statehouses last year. And Chatham House, a British think tank, declared in a 2023 report that the “global assault on LGBTQ rights undermines democracy.”
Why We Wrote This
A story focused on
Tracking global LGBTQ+ rights is a complicated endeavor. The community continues to face diverse challenges, but overall, data shows a story of gradual, hard-won progress.
Andrew Flores, a professor at American University who authored the UCLA report, says these alarming headlines are only half of the story. In recent decades, 56 countries have seen an increase in LGBTQ+ acceptance – and on average, those countries have progressed more than other countries have declined. That shift in attitude has allowed new rights and legal protections to be introduced around the world. This progress can sometimes get lost in the noise.
“We have a negativity bias,” he says. “We focus on the bad things, and we tend to downplay the good things. And I think that what gets lost in that story is that, within the U.S. and also abroad, there have also been places that have expanded rights for LGBTI people.”
Legislation landscape
Same-sex relations are legal in about two-thirds of United Nations member states – a noticeable upturn from 1969, when over half of all member nations criminalized same-sex acts.
The number of countries allowing same-sex marriage or civil unions has risen gradually since 2001, when the Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage, but they remain in the minority. In Africa and Asia, only three jurisdictions – South Africa, Taiwan, and, as of last week, Thailand – comprehensively allow same-sex couples to marry or enter civil unions.
Countries have also introduced a variety of protections for LGBTQ+ people over the years. Conversion therapy, which the American Psychiatric Association condemns as harmful and ineffective, is illegal in 16 countries. Adoption rights are another bright spot. At least on paper, same-sex couples can jointly adopt children in most of the jurisdictions where marriages or civil unions are legal.
Yet “it’s not a falsehood to think” that some places have drawn back on protections and rights for LGBTQ+ people in recent years, Dr. Flores says.
Human Dignity Trust
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Jacob Turcotte/Staff
In the U.S. this year, state legislatures have introduced at least 275 anti-LGBTQ+ bills, many of them targeting transgender youth and adults. Politicians in Europe have upped their use of transphobic rhetoric. Uganda last spring passed a draconian law that imposes the death penalty in cases of “aggravated homosexuality.”
“The concern is real,” says Dr. Flores. “Social change and policy change around LGBTQI rights is not a one-way ratchet, or always going to be expanding equality.”
Public opinion divided
Globally, public opinion toward LGBTQ+ people has grown more polarized. Between 1980 and 2021, the most accepting countries grew more accepting and the least accepting became less so.
Peoples’ attitudes can vary largely depending on the issue at hand. Same-sex marriage, for example, enjoys generally high rates of public approval. And in a 2024 survey of 26 countries by Ipsos, nearly three-quarters of respondents said that transgender people should be protected against discrimination.
At the same time, just over half of Americans said they don’t support transgender athletes competing based on the gender with which they identify. Across 23 countries, including the U.S., 40% of people felt similarly. The only other survey questions that garnered such high opposition were also related to transgender rights, such as whether or not adolescents should have access to gender-affirming care.
Global Acceptance Index from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles
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Jacob Turcotte/Staff
But that isn’t the story everywhere. In Southeast Asia, transgender people can in some cases find higher levels of societal acceptance than lesbian, gay, and bisexual people can, Dr. Flores says.
“From a Western perspective, you’re kind of thinking that trans is very new and very controversial,” he says. “But if you go to other regions of the world, particularly Southeast Asia, the discussion around trans people has been more developed, and transgender rights have actually moved sometimes more quickly … before, say, gay rights.”
Overall, Thai respondents were the most likely to profess support for transgender rights. In that country, 82% of respondents to the Ipsos poll supported transgender people using bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity – the highest of any country surveyed.