LGBT rights by country or territory


Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction – encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality.
Notably, as of 2020, 29 countries recognize same-sex marriage; they are: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay. By contrast, not counting non-state actors and extrajudicial killings, only one country is believed to impose the death penalty on consensual same-sex sexual acts: Iran. The death penalty is on the books but, as far as is known, not enforced in Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Somalia. Sudan rescinded its unenforced death penalty for anal sex in 2020. 15 countries have stoning on the books as a penalty for adultery, which would include gay sex, but this is only enforced by the legal authorities in Iran.
In 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed its first resolution recognizing LGBT rights, following which the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report documenting violations of the rights of LGBT people, including hate crimes, criminalization of homosexual activity, and discrimination. Following the issuance of the report, the United Nations urged all countries which had not yet done so to enact laws protecting basic LGBT rights.

Scope of laws

Laws that affect LGBT people include, but are not limited to, the following:

Ancient Celts

According to Aristotle, although most "belligerent nations" were strongly influenced by their women, the Celts were unusual because their men openly preferred male lovers. David Rankin in Celts and the Classical World notes: "Athenaeus echoes this comment and so does Ammianus. It seems to be the general opinion of antiquity." In book XIII of his Deipnosophists, the Roman Greek rhetorician and grammarian Athenaeus, repeating assertions made by Diodorus Siculus in the 1st century BC, wrote that Celtic women were beautiful but that the men preferred to sleep together. Diodorus went further, stating: "the young men will offer themselves to strangers and are insulted if the offer is refused". Rankin argues that the ultimate source of these assertions is likely to be Poseidonius and speculates that these authors may be recording, "some kind of bonding ritual... which requires abstinence from women at certain times".

Ancient India

Throughout Hindu and Vedic texts, there are many descriptions of saints, demigods, and even the Supreme Lord transcending gender norms and manifesting multiple combinations of sex and gender. Alka Pande says that alternate sexuality was an integral part of ancient India and homosexuality was considered to be a form of the sacred, drawing upon the examples of the hermaphrodite Shikhandi and Arjuna who became a eunuch. Ruth Vanita argues that ancient India was relatively tolerant and views on it were ambiguous, from acceptance to rejection.
Some Hindu texts mention homosexuality and support them. The Kamasutra mentions homosexuality as a type of sexual pleasure. There are also legends of Hindu gods change gender or are hermaphrodites and engage in relations that would be considered homoerotic in the other case. Homosexuality was also practiced in the royal families especially with servants. Kamasutra also mentions the "svairini" who used to live by herself or with another woman. The king Bhagiratha is described as being born of sexual union of two queens of the king Dilip. However, there is also a patriarchal background represented as the king left no heir and his younger wife took on the role of a man.
Ayoni or non-vaginal sex of all types are punishable in the Arthashastra. Homosexual acts are, however, treated as a smaller offence punishable by a fine, while unlawful heterosexual sex carries much harsher punishment. The Dharmsastras, especially the later ones, prescribe against non-vaginal sex like the Vashistha Dharmasutra. The Yājñavalkya Smṛti prescribes fines for such acts including those with other men. Manusmriti prescribes light punishments for such acts. Vanita states that the verses about punishment for a sex between female and a maiden is due to its strong emphasis on a maiden's sexual purity.
The Narada Purana in 1.15.936 states that those who have non-vaginal intercourse will go to Retobhojana where they have to live on semen. Ruth Vanita states that the punishment in afterlife suggested by it is comical and befitting the act. The Skanda Purana states that those who indulge in such acts will acquire impotency.
There are many tales in Hindu mythology interpreted as representing transsexual people, cross-dressers, bonding women and accounts interpreted to have elements of lesbian relations. These include Brihannala, Shikhandi, the goddess Mohini. Also in the Ramayana, Lord Shiva transforms into a woman to play with Parvati in the tale of Ila. The king Yuvanaswa is shown as giving birth to a boy. A few temples represent homosexual relations in their architecture. The most prominent example are that of Khajuraho.

Ancient West Asia

Ancient Israel

The ancient Law of Moses forbids men from lying with men in Leviticus 18 and gives a story of attempted homosexual rape in Genesis 19, in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, after which the cities were soon destroyed with "brimstone and fire, from the Lord" and the death penalty was prescribed to its inhabitants – and to Lot's wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt because she turned back to watch the cities' destruction. In Deuteronomy 22:5, cross-dressing is condemned as "abominable".

Assyria

In Assyrian society, sex crimes were punished identically whether they were homosexual or heterosexual. An individual faced no punishment for penetrating someone of equal social class, a cult prostitute, or with someone whose gender roles were not considered solidly masculine. Such sexual relations were even seen as good fortune, with an Akkadian tablet, the Šumma ālu, reading, "If a man copulates with his equal from the rear, he becomes the leader among his peers and brothers". However, homosexual relationships with fellow soldiers, slaves, royal attendants, or those where a social better was submissive or penetrated, were treated as bad omens.
Middle Assyrian Law Codes dating 1075 BC has a particularly harsh law for homosexuality in the military, which reads: "If a man have intercourse with his brother-in-arms, they shall turn him into a eunuch." A similar law code reads, "If a seignior lay with his neighbor, when they have prosecuted him convicted him, they shall lie with him turn him into a eunuch". This law code condemns a situation that involves homosexual rape. Any Assyrian male could visit a prostitute or lie with another male, just as long as false rumors or forced sex were not involved with another male.

Ancient Rome

The "conquest mentality" of the ancient Romans shaped Roman homosexual practices. In the Roman Republic, a citizen's political liberty was defined in part by the right to preserve his body from physical compulsion or use by others; for the male citizen to submit his body to the giving of pleasure was considered servile. As long as a man played the penetrative role, it was socially acceptable and considered natural for him to have same-sex relations, without a perceived loss of his masculinity or social standing. The bodies of citizen youths were strictly off-limits, and the Lex Scantinia imposed penalties on those who committed a sex crime ' against a freeborn male minor. Acceptable same-sex partners were males excluded from legal protections as citizens: slaves, male prostitutes, and the infames, entertainers or others who might be technically free but whose lifestyles set them outside the law.
"Homosexual" and "heterosexual" were thus not categories of Roman sexuality, and no words exist in Latin that would precisely translate these concepts. A male citizen who willingly performed oral sex or received anal sex was disparaged, but there is only limited evidence of legal penalties against these men, who were presumably "homosexual" in the modern sense. In courtroom and political rhetoric, charges of effeminacy and passive sexual behaviors were directed particularly at "democratic" politicians ' such as Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.
Roman law addressed the rape of a male citizen as early as the 2nd century BC, when a ruling was issued in a case that may have involved a man of same-sex orientation. It was ruled that even a man who was "disreputable and questionable" had the same right as other citizens not to have his body subjected to forced sex. A law probably dating to the dictatorship of Julius Caesar defined rape as forced sex against "boy, woman, or anyone"; the rapist was subject to execution, a rare penalty in Roman law. A male classified as infamis, such as a prostitute or actor, could not as a matter of law be raped, nor could a slave, who was legally classified as property; the slave's owner, however, could prosecute the rapist for property damage.
In the Roman army of the Republic, sex among fellow soldiers violated the decorum against intercourse with citizens and was subject to harsh penalties, including death, as a violation of military discipline. The Greek historian Polybius lists deserters, thieves, perjurers, and "those who in youth have abused their persons" as subject to the fustuarium, clubbing to death. Ancient sources are most concerned with the effects of sexual harassment by officers, but the young soldier who brought an accusation against his superior needed to show that he had not willingly taken the passive role or prostituted himself. Soldiers were free to have relations with their male slaves; the use of a fellow citizen-soldier's body was prohibited, not homosexual behaviors per se. By the late Republic and throughout the Imperial period, there is increasing evidence that men whose lifestyle marked them as "homosexual" in the modern sense served openly.
Although Roman law did not recognize marriage between men, and in general Romans regarded marriage as a heterosexual union with the primary purpose of producing children, in the early Imperial period some male couples were celebrating traditional marriage rites. Juvenal remarks with disapproval that his friends often attended such ceremonies. The emperor Nero had two marriages to men, once as the bride and once as the groom. His consort Sporus appeared in public as Nero's wife wearing the regalia that was customary for the Roman empress.
Apart from measures to protect the prerogatives of citizens, the prosecution of homosexuality as a general crime began in the 3rd century of the Christian era when male prostitution was banned by Philip the Arab. By the end of the 4th century, after the Roman Empire had come under Christian rule, passive homosexuality was punishable by burning. "Death by sword" was the punishment for a "man coupling like a woman" under the Theodosian Code. Under Justinian, all same-sex acts, passive or active, no matter who the partners, were declared contrary to nature and punishable by death.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

recorded that, in the past, male Azande warriors in the northern present-day DR Congo routinely took on young male lovers between the ages of twelve and twenty, who helped with household tasks and participated in intercrural sex with their older husbands. The practice had died out by the early 20th century, after Europeans had gained control of African countries, but was recounted to Evans-Pritchard by elders.

Lesotho

Anthropologists Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe reported that women in Lesotho engaged in socially sanctioned "long term, erotic relationships" called motsoalle.

Papua New Guinea

In Papua New Guinea, same-sex relationships were an integral part of the culture of certain tribes until the middle of the last century. The Etoro and Marind-anim for example, even viewed heterosexuality as wasteful and celebrated homosexuality instead. They believed that in sharing semen, they are sharing their life force, yet women simply wasted this force any time they didn't get pregnant after sex. In certain traditional Melanesian cultures a prepubertal boy would be paired with an older adolescent who would become his mentor and who would "inseminate" him over a number of years in order for the younger to also reach puberty.

Global LGBT rights maps

LGBT rights at the United Nations


Homosexual "propaganda" and "morality" laws by country or territory


Decriminalization of same-sex sexual intercourse by country or territory


Equalization of age of consent laws for same-sex couples by country or territory

, Nazi Germany annexed territory or established reichskommissariats which extended Germany's laws against same-sex sexual intercourse to those territories and reichskommissariats. Age of consent was previously equalized for same-sex couples in the following countries or territories before German annexation or establishment of reichskommissariats: Belluno, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Poland, and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. All countries and territories listed that where annexed or established into reichskommissariats by Nazi Germany during World War II where restored as independent countries or reincorporated into their previous countries during or after the war and thus re-legalized equal age of consent laws for same-sex couples in those areas.

Legal status of same-sex marriage


Legal status of adoption by same-sex couples by country or territory


LGBT service in national militaries by country or territory


Employment discrimination laws by sexual orientation or gender identity by country or territory


Anti-discrimination laws covering goods and services by sexual orientation and/or gender identity by country or territory


Constitutional discrimination laws by sexual orientation and/or gender identity by country or territory


LGBT hate crime laws by country or territory


Incitement to hatred based on sexual orientation and gender identity prohibited by country or territory


Ban on conversion therapy for minors on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity by country or territory


LGBT immigration equality by country or territory


Blood donation policies for men who have sex with men by country or territory


Blood donation policies for female sex partners of men who have sex with men by country or territory


Laws concerning gender identity-expression by country or territory


Legal recognition of non-binary genders and third gender

Timeline

LGBT-related laws by country or territory

Africa

List of countries or territories by LGBT rights in Africa

Americas

List of countries or territories by LGBT rights in the Americas

Asia

List of countries or territories by LGBT rights in Asia

Europe

List of countries or territories by LGBT rights in Europe

Oceania

List of countries or territories by LGBT rights in Oceania