Russia’s Interior Ministry has plans for a sweeping electronic database of LGBTQ+ people in the country, Meduza, an independent Russian news outlet, revealed this week.
Citing anonymous sources at the Interior Ministry, the outlet reported that the Orwellian plan has been in discussion since last year after Russia’s Supreme Court outlawed the so-called “international LGBT movement” as an “extremist organization” at the urging of President Vladimir Putin.
The database will be a “large-scale” system to track members of the LGBTQ+ community at large, according to sources.
The plans were corroborated by Dmitry Chukreyev, an official with the Civic Chamber of Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth largest city. He said police have been keeping informal lists of LGBTQ+ individuals since the Supreme Court ruling was announced.
In 2024, police conducted at least 42 raids on LGBTQ+-friendly venues across Russia, according to an investigation by independent news outlet Current Timeand human rights organization Sphere. Beatings, forced confinement, and sadistic humiliations based on sexual and gender identities are regular features of the sweeps.
Russian officials and state-aligned media regularly describe Russia’s LGBTQ+ community as a network of “paramilitary groups” calling for an “open gender war,” who engage in “dehumanization” and “devil worship,” the outlet reports. Officials and media credit security forces’ actions with “suppressing” anti-state activity.
The raids, in addition to intimidating the queer community at large and forcing the closure of several venues, have provided security officials with information that would supply an electronic LGBTQ+ registry.
An employee at a Siberian queer establishment told Meduza, “Security forces copied the entire database from the computer where we keep track of reservations,” obtaining information about hundreds of clients. Fingerprints and mouth swabs were collected from visitors during a raid the Eden club in Chelyabinsk, and employees and patrons at the Orenburg club Pose were forced to state their registered residential address on camera.
At a house party raided by security forces in Leningrad Oblast, guests were forced to surrender their passports and unlock their phones; if someone refused, the others were subjected to collective punishment and forced to squat.
According to human rights activists, such raids are also aimed at exposing LGBTQ+ government officials. The organizer of one queer-friendly event in the Urals region revealed police who raided the venue hoped to “catch deputies [officeholders] and other significant individuals” at the event.
While security forces continue to collect data in ever-more sadistic operations, progress on a full-scale LGBTQ+ registry has been hampered by Putin’s other current obsession: the expansion of Greater Russia through his war on Ukraine. Forces assigned to that conflict are draining the ranks of police who would otherwise be hunting down members of the “international LGBT movement.”
But the raids continue to produce results.
One sweep at a restaurant and club in Gorno-Altaysk last year yielded data on 80 patrons and staff alone, an employee said.
“We know all of you now,” security forces repeated as the raid dragged on.
The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor has filed applications for arrest warrants for two senior Taliban officials, charging them with gender persecution, including of LGBTQ+ Afghans.
In a January 23 statement, ICC Prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan said that after an investigation of alleged crimes committed against Afghan civilians, his office has determined that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that the Supreme Leader of the Taliban, Haibatullah Akhunzada, and the Chief Justice of the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,’ Abdul Hakim Haqqani, bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds, under article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute,” the 1998 international treaty that established the ICC.
As Artemis Akbary, executive director of the Afghanistan LGBTIQ Organization, told the Washington Blade, Khan’s application marks “the first time in history that the ICC has officially recognized the crimes committed against LGBTIQ+ people.”
“These applications recognize that Afghan women and girls as well as the LGBTQI+ community are facing an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban,” Khan wrote in his statement.
Khan wrote that since at least August 2021, Akhunzada and Haqqani have been responsible for “severe deprivations of victims’ fundamental rights” under international law, “including the right to physical integrity and autonomy, to free movement and free expression, to education, to private and family life, and to free assembly.” He added that these crimes have been committed in connection with others under the Rome Statute, “including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, enforced disappearance, and other inhumane acts.”
The Taliban returned to power following the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, instituting an immediate return to its interpretation of Sharia law, which Khan argued should not “be used to justify the deprivation of fundamental human rights.” As the Blade notes, a 2022 Human Rights Watch report documented nearly 60 cases of targeted violence against LGBTQ+ Afghans in just the months following the Taliban’s return to power. The following year, Outright International reported that Taliban security officials appeared to have ramped up their systematic attacks on the country’s LGBTQ+ community, targeting gay men and transgender women in particular, “subjecting them to physical and sexual assault and arbitrary detention” as well as public floggings.
In October 2023, Afghan LGBTQ+ rights group Rainbow Afghanistan detailed the harrowing abuses queer people in the country have faced since 2021. In an open letter, the group said that LGBTQ+ Afghans had been tortured, stoned to death, sexually assaulted, and forced into heterosexual marriages, among other atrocities, while “a large number of members of the LGBT community lost their lives due to suicide.” The group called on the United Nations and international human rights organizations to act.
“This application for an arrest warrant sends a strong message that the international community rejects the gender persecution of LGBTIQ+ people,” Afghanistan LGBTIQ Organization’s Akbary said of Khan’s action. “LGBTIQ+ people in Afghanistan need our support and solidarity more than ever, and we must ensure that they have access to justice and accountability.”
Human Rights Watch International Justice Director Liz Evenson said that Khan’s application for the warrants “should put the Taliban’s oppression of women, girls, and gender nonconforming people back on the international community’s radar.”
“With no justice in sight in Afghanistan, the ICC warrant requests offer an essential pathway for a measure of accountability,” Evenson said, according to the Blade.
ILGA World Executive Director Julia Ehrt called the ICC’s recognition of LGBTQ+ people among the victims of gender persecution “groundbreaking.”
As Khan noted in his statement, ICC judges will determine whether arrest warrants for Akhunzada and Haqqani will be issued, and if so, Khan said his office would work closely with ICC Registrar Osvaldo Zavala Glier to ensure that Akhunzada and Haqqani face justice.
Ecuador’s Constitutional Court recently made public a ruling upholding the rights of a transgender girl whose private school in Santa Elena failed to support her during her gender transition. The court ordered comprehensive remedies after finding that the school discriminated against the girl, failed to act in accordance with her best interests, and violated a wide range of other rights, including her right to education.
In its ruling, the court refers to the girl as C.L.A.G in order to protect her identity. In 2017, C.L.A.G.’s parents sought the school’s support, requesting psychosocial assistance and gender diversity training for the school’s staff. While initially cooperative, the school later failed to consistently use her preferred name, refused her access to the girls’ bathroom, required her to wear the boys’ uniform, and asked her parents to produce a diagnosis of gender dysphoria or “transsexuality.”
The girl’s parents turned to the District of Education, which issued recommendations to the school to better accommodate her gender identity. The school rejected them, and C.L.A.G’s parents turned to the courts. After receiving unfavorable decisions from lower courts, the parents filed an appeal before the Constitutional Court.
Among its remedies, the court ordered the Ministry of Education and other key authorities to develop and disseminate a mandatory protocol for respecting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans children in schools within six months. The protocol must include guidelines on the use of a child’s preferred name, dress, and bathroom use consistent with their gender.
This ruling comes as Ecuador struggles to fully implement remedies ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Paola Guzmán Albarracín v. Ecuador to prevent school-related sexual and gender-based violence. The Ministry of Education’s strategy on comprehensive sexuality education – a cornerstone of its prevention efforts – aims to equip students with essential information on topics such as puberty, healthy relationships, and gender identity. It has faced resistance from some teachers and officials, as well as groups that rail against so-called gender ideology.
In 2024, the Ministry of Education caved in to external pressure and temporarily removed materials from its “Sexualipedia” platform, which included age-appropriate content on gender identity. Some content has been restored, but episodes on gender identity remain offline, awaiting “scientific validation.”
C.L.A.G.’s case underscores the need for clear policies to ensure all students, including trans children, can access their right to education without discrimination. Ecuador should develop and implement the protocols ordered by the court, ensuring students receive accurate, inclusive information on gender identity. This will have an important impact on the safety and dignity of countless students and Ecuadoran society.
A memorial for LGBTQ+ veterans is to be built at the National Arboretum in Staffordshire, 25 years after the ban on queer service personnel was lifted in the UK.
The UK’s first memorial dedicated to LGBTQ+ veterans, which looks like a crumpled letter made of bronze, is created from words taken from evidence from military service members who were affected by the ban.
The memorial is being funded by a £350,000 ($428,000) grant from the Office for Veterans’ Affairs within the Ministry of Defence, with the construction overseen by LGBTQ+ military charity Fighting With Pride.
Ed Hall, the non-executive chairman of Fighting With Pride, said: “The trustees are delighted that we have such a strong winner for the LGBT+ armed forces community memorial.
“It’s been incredibly important to all of us at Fighting With Pride that we held a rigorous creative process to find the right design that will provide a place of peace and reflection for the LGBT+ armed forces family.”
Minister for veterans’ affairs Alistair Carns denounced the defunct ban as shameful.
“When I joined the Royal Marines in 1999, this abhorrent ban on homosexuality was still in place,” he said. “A quarter of a century later, we turn a page on that shameful chapter in our national story.”
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The National Arboretum in Staffordshire. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
LGBTQ+ veterans who were dismissed or discharged because of their sexual orientation or gender identity will receive £50,000 ($61,000). Those who endured harassment or ill-treatment in addition will get an extra £20,000 (close to $25,000).
When the compensation was announced, defence secretary John Healey said: “The historic treatment of LGBT veterans was a moral stain on our nation. Our government is determined to right the wrongs of the past and recognise the hurt that too many endured.”
Isreal’s war on Gaza has made finding medication nearly impossible for people trying to survive in the region, and Palestinians living with HIV have been hit particularly hard.
According to The Intercept, aid groups like Glia say that HIV medication has specifically been blocked from entering Gaza, though Isreal’s agency for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories denies the allegation. “Israel neither blocks nor limits the entry of medications, including those for HIV, which can be brought in without quantitative restrictions,” the agency told the outlet.
But Dr. Tarek Loubani, a Palestinian Canadian emergency physician with Glia told The Intercept that Israel has treated caches of medication “basically like weapons depots.” He alleges that the Israeli military has burned medication warehouses and posted snipers outside others.
Earlier this week, prior to news that Isreal and Hamas were close to a ceasefire agreement, The Intercept published a long piece detailing one queer HIV-positive Palestinian man’s struggle to get vital medication amid the ongoing horrors in the region over the past year.
The 27-year-old, identified as E.S., uses a walker for mobility so was forced to remain in Gaza City rather than fleeing south to Rafah like many of his neighbors. He’s also been diagnosed with neurosyphilis and requires not only common antiretrovirals used to treat HIV, but also the more rarely prescribed lopinavir/ritonavir. The violence in the region since October 2023 has caused food as well as medication shortages, exacerbating E.S.’s mobility issues.
E.S. was able to obtain a three-month supply of his medication in November 2023. The following March, as his supply dwindled, he began reaching out on social media hoping to find a way to access more medication. In July, his brother made a dangerous trip to E.S.’s doctor’s home and secured enough pills to last until October 2024. E.S. began rationing his medication, fearing that there would be none left in Northern Gaza when his supply ran out.
In August, he lost contact with his doctor. “For the past ten months, I was lucky,” he wrote the following month. “I had access to my HIV medication because I stayed in the north of Gaza. But now, I’m running out. I took the last doses in the north.”
By early October, E.S. was in touch with Loubani from Glia, who had procured three bottles of lopinavar/ritonavir pills in Canada. But Loubani’s team was first denied entry into neighboring Jordan. Then a three-month supply of meds that Glia was able to get to the Gaza border was later confiscated, and Israel reportedly banned the organization, along with five other medical NGOs, from entering Gaza. (In an October 30 press release, Glia announced that Israel had lifted the ban.)
E.S. and his family were forced to relocate to another part of Gaza City in mid-October, after a missile struck their home. Later that month, however, E.S. reconnected with his doctor, who managed to get him more of his medication — albeit in doses produced for children. And early last month Loubani told him he had finally gotten a three-month supply of lopinavar/ritonavir into Gaza. E.S. currently has enough medication to last him a few months.
The United Kingdom has announced its plans to build a memorial for LGBTQ+ veterans who were persecuted and discharged under the country’s ban on queer military members, which remained in place from 1967 to 2000. The bronze memorial will resemble a crumpled sheet of paper and contain phrases from LGBTQ+ people affected by the ban. The announcement of the monument follows a government pledge to give £70,000 ($85,159) to military members harmed by the ban.
The memorial — whose design was chosen from 38 submissions and five finalists — will be constructed at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, a county about 145 miles northwest of London, just north of Birmingham. It will include phrases collected from LGBTQ+ soldiers during a recent investigation into the policy spearheaded by Terence Etherton, a member of Britain’s House of Lords.
The phrases include ones like “A battle for love,” “a place to belong,” and “together we stand.” Though most of the letters will be gray in color, some individual words — like “respect,” “strength,” and “pride” — will be highlighted in gold.
The memorial received a £350,000 grant from the Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) Office for Veterans’ Affairs. Its construction is being overseen by the LGBTQ+ military charity Fighting With Pride, The Hereford Times reported.
“The trustees are delighted that we have such a strong winner for the LGBT+ armed forces community memorial,” said Ed Hall, chairman of Fighting With Pride. “It’s been incredibly important to all of us at Fighting With Pride that we held a rigorous creative process to find the right design that will provide a place of peace and reflection for the LGBT+ armed forces family.”
The lasting harm of the UK’s anti-LGBTQ+ military ban
While the U.K. decriminalized same-sex encounters in 1967, it erected a ban on military members under the pretense that queer service members harmed morale and threatened preparedness.
The ban, which affected hundreds of thousands of military members, resulted in military members facing intimidation, blackmail, discrimination and harassment, the seizure of personal letters and photos, intense psychological interrogations, invasive medical examinations that sometimes involved sexual assault, forced resignations and outings to family members, dishonorable discharges, prison time, alienation from military supports and benefits, and even suicides over the shame, isolation and poverty that resulted from all of the above.
Several military members discharged under the ban told researchers that the policy, “Made me [feel] embarrassed of my own sexuality. Made me feel a lesser person, one who was open to abuse and ridicule.” Some LGBTQ+ military members told the BBC that staying closeted felt like a “self-betrayal” and that they hid their same-sex relationships, often censoring themselves in private letters and referring to their partners in public by names often used by members of the opposite sex.
Another said the policy made them feel “lonely, dirty, outcast,” and left them “severely gay bashed … threatened, robbed, deprived, imprisoned, mind games, loss of confidence, removed the joy of sex, self-hate, made to feel ashamed of being me, nervous.”
“It took away my career, it took away my pension, it took away my future,” yet another said. “It just, it just utterly destroyed it, and it took away a job I know I was good at… it just took away my home, my livelihood, my future, career, pension. It doesn’t really get much worse than that, does it?”
Finally, some justice nearly 25 years after the ban’s repeal
A group of ousted LGBTQ+ veterans and allies eventually formed an activist group called the Rank Outsiders. Together, along with other U.K. LGBTQ+ groups like Stonewall, successfully raised public awareness about the ban’s inherent unfairness and pressured the MoD to repeal the ban in 2000.
In July 2023, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, apologized on behalf of the nation for the ban. In December 2024, the government said that veterans who were discharged and “negatively affected” by the ban could receive up to £70,000 ($85,159) as compensation. Veterans can also apply to have their rank restored and discharge reasons amended.
Lt. Cdr. Duncan Lustig-Prean, who was blackmailed for his homosexuality and discharged under the ban, told the BBC that seeing the monument will be “an intensely emotional experience – not just because we never expected to get this far, but also because for anyone who serves, remembrance of those who gave their lives is profoundly important to us.”
“That’s one of the reasons why I really want to go and see that memorial and contemplate the LGBTQ people who died for this country, as well as those who gave their careers because of this policy,” he added.
Anti-LGBTQ+ persecution has intensified in Russia since the government strengthened its anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda law and outlawed the so-called “international LGBT movement.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has instituted successively broader anti-LGBTQ+ “propaganda laws” since 2013, and raids and arrests at LGBTQ+ clubs have become commonplace across the country.
In October, for example, Police in Moscow raided two gay clubs, detaining over 50 people. Photos and video from the raids was posted on pro-Russia Telegram channels MSK1 and SHOT on October 12 showing masked police storming into downtown Moscow club Central Station, forcing shouting at patrons and forcing them to lie on the ground. One clip shows officers searching people, with one cop violently kicking a detainee’s leg.
In December, as many as a dozen individuals rounded up at gay clubs in Moscow were found guilty of “hooliganism” by a Russian court and sentenced to administrative detention.
A report from Voice of America found that 12 criminal cases were brought against LGBTQ+ Russians in 2024 based on the newest propaganda laws, in addition to the first arrests and fines for “extremist symbols” and “LGBT propaganda.” Eleven of the 12 criminal defendants were employees of raided clubs or other LGBTQ+ service providers. “
“That is, these are not directly activists who, for example, post some information on social networks and, in the opinion of the authorities, are engaged in ‘propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations,’” explained Dmitry Anisimov, press secretary of the OVD-Info project, which released a year-end review of Russian repression in December. None of the cases have yet begun trial, but the defendants could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.
2024 also saw a myriad of Russian citizens arrested and fined for online posts that included rainbow flags, some of which were posted years earlier.
And unsurprisingly, the LGBTQ+ community is terrified as experts predict the arrests and raids will only worsen in 2025.
“People are closing themselves off more and more,” LGBT rights lawyer Max Olenichev told Voice of America. “They don’t go to such places. But I always say that it is important to maintain social connections on a horizontal level. No law can prohibit people from going to the cinema together, having parties at home, and somehow communicating with each other on any topic.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan marked the launch of Turkey’s “Year of the Family” on Monday with an attack on the LGBTQ community and the announcement of measures to boost birth rates.
Citing the “historical truth that a strong family paves the way for a strong state,” Erdogan unveiled a series of financial measures to support young families.
The president returned to themes he has espoused before about LGBTQ people, including the portrayal of the LGBTQ movement as part of a foreign conspiracy aimed at undermining Turkey.
“It is our common responsibility to protect our children and youth from harmful trends and perverse ideologies. Neoliberal cultural trends are crossing borders and penetrating all corners of the world,” he told an audience in Ankara. “They also lead to LGBT and other movements gaining ground.
“The target of gender neutralization policies, in which LGBT is used as a battering ram, is the family. Criticism of LGBT is immediately silenced, just like the legitimate criticisms of Zionism. Anyone who defends nature and the family is subject to heavy oppression.”
Despite its low profile in Turkey, the LGBTQ community has emerged as one of the main targets of the government and its supporters in recent years.
Pride parades have been banned since 2015, with those seeking to participate facing tear gas and police barricades. In recent years, meanwhile, anti-LGBTQ rallies have received state support.
Turning to the “alarming” decline in the population growth rate, Erdogan said Turkey was “losing blood” and recalled his 2007 demand that families have at least three children.
The president also pointed to people getting married later in life and rising divorce rates as causes for concern. Turkey’s annual population growth rate dropped from 2.53% in 2015 to 0.23% last year.
“If we do not take the necessary measures, the problem will reach irreparable levels. In such an environment, population loss is inevitable,” he added.
To combat the threat to the family, Erdogan revealed policies such as interest-free loans for newlyweds; improved monetary allowances for the parents of new-born children; financial, counseling and housing support to encourage new families; and free or low-cost childcare.
Government officials in China are cracking down on erotic fiction writers and their online distribution networks, according to multiple news reports and social media posts, with dozens of writers reportedly arrested in one province and facing years in prison.
Many of the writers specialize in danmei, a style depicting gay romance and sex similar to Japanese manga.
In December, Chinese news site Shuiping Jiyuan reported police had detained more than 50 writers in Anhui province, west of Shanghai, since June. Sentences have ranged up to four and a half years in prison.
At least 10 people have been sentenced for posting gay-themed erotica online, according to open records from the Jixi County People’s Court in Anhui, the South China Morning Post reports.
A “special task force” carried out the arrests of the writers, many of whom published on the Taiwan-based adult fiction website Haitang Literature, Hong Kong’s Sing Tao DailyNews and Taiwan’s Pacific Daily newspapers reported.
“One of my friends is an author, who was released on bail, called me from a new phone and told us to be prepared,” one writer posted to the gaming bulletin board NGA, cited by the AO3 fan-fiction site on Reddit.
“Later, others also reported that their friends had been affected,” the post recounted. “We compared details and confirmed that this is a nationwide crackdown. Moreover, the website’s [Chinese] distributor is indeed in trouble and can’t be reached.”
China’s state-controlled media haven’t reported on the arrests.
“Disseminating obscene electronic messages” has long been illegal under the authoritarian Chinese regime. A 1997 law defines obscene material as “publications, films, video and audio recordings, and images containing depictions of sexual acts.”
In 2010, a Chinese court ruling determined erotic material that gains more than 5,000 clicks can be deemed a criminal offense.
How the writers are sentenced under Chinese law depends on how much money they make. Those who earn more than 250,000 yuan (US$34,500) from selling erotic materials can face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Sentences have been reduced, however, if the writers can pay back all or a portion of the money they’ve made selling their work online. Family members have posted to social media and crowdfunding sites in an effort to raise funds to get their loved ones an early release.
Erotic literature has long been a target in the Chinese government’s crusade defending “social morals” in the Communist country, despite the fact there is rarely an obvious victim in such cases, said Chen Zhaonan, a Guangdong-based lawyer. He argued against the government’s practice of basing sentencing on potentially inflated sales figures gleaned from the erotica websites.
In 2018, a woman using the pen name Tianyi was jailed for 10 and a half years for publishing a novel that was filled with “graphic depictions of male homosexual sex,” according to local media reports. It reportedly sold 7,000 copies.
It had been an important 12 months for LGBTQ+ rights around the world – in bad ways as well as good.
While steps in the right direction have been made in some countries, including Estonia legalising same-sex marriage, there’s been a drop in LGBTQ+ equality in other nations, such as Georgia, Kazakhstan, and even the US.
Russia, meanwhile, has continued to be one the most dangerous places for LGBTQ+ people.
Here are some of the countries that regressed on LGBTQ+ rights in 2024.
Georgia
Georgian president Salome Zourabichvili vetoed an anti-LGBTQ+ bill but it still passed into law. (Getty)
Georgia is one of the nations causing particular concern.
The country implemented a bill – despite president Salome Zourabichvili’s attempt to block it – banning changes to gender on official documents, outlawing gender-affirming care, and placing major restrictions on LGBTQ+ freedom of expression.
The legislation prompted various not-for-profit organisations, including Rainbow Migration, to demand that the UK take Georgia off of its list of safe countries.
Minesh Parekh, policy and public affairs manager at the nonprofit Rainbow Migration, said of Georgia: “There’s widespread evidence of the danger that LGBTQI+ people face in Georgia and the situation has only worsened in recent months.
“It is imperative that the UK government stops using ‘safe states’ designations and ensures people are not returned to unsafe conditions. We are currently supporting LGBTQI+ Georgians who are terrified at the prospect of being sent back to the danger they’ve fled.”
Parekh noted the non-profit’s efforts in supporting Noah, a gay man from Georgia whose family subjected him to abuse over his sexuality, including forcing him to take medication because they believed he “had a demon inside him.”
“Noah was luckily granted refugee status, but many other Georgians could face being sent back to life threatening situations – and we therefore urge the Government to repeal the cruel Illegal Migration Act introduced by the previous government, and guarantee LGBTQI+ people’s safety.”
USA
President Joe Biden has been fighting a losing battle. (Getty)
Despite efforts by the present administration to promote LGBTQ+ rights, including hosting one of the biggest Pride events in the White House, and Joe Biden becoming the first sitting president to be interviewed by an LGBTQ+ news publication, the continued onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ bills tells a different story.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), at least 574 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been proposed in US legislatures across various states since the beginning of the year – 64 more than the reported number for 2023.
The bills, several of which have passed into law, include curriculum censorship, redefining gender to exclude trans people, and the banning of gender-affirming care for those under the age of 18.
Forty-six of bills have passed into law, while 67 have yet to be debated, and 62 are advancing through congress.
To make matters worse, Donald Trump’s re-election for a second term as president doesn’t bode well for LGBTQ+ people, and one of his top advisors, Elon Musk, has vowed to eradicate what he calls the woke mind virus – and reportedly even wants the ACLU to be “defunded”.
Bulgaria
President Rumen Radev followed in Russia’s footsteps. (Getty)
Bulgaria’s track record of LGBTQ+ rights over the past few years has been poor, and the government is continuing its efforts to make things harder for the community.
President Rumen Radev followed in Russia’s footsteps by signing into law a bill prohibiting so-called LGBT propaganda in schools. The legislation was approved by 135 votes to 57 in parliament and took effect in August.
Same-sex marriage, gender-affirming care and the right to legally change gender are all illegal.
Ghana
President Nana Akufo-Addo is stepping down. (Getty)
In February, the Ghanaian government approved a sweeping law that outlawed identifying as LGBTQ+ and campaigning for queer rights.
Dubbed the Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, the lawimposed a prison sentence of up to three years for those convicted, while anyone found guilty of LGBTQ+ advocacy campaigns aimed at under-18s could face 10 years in jail.
President Nana Akufo-Addo is due to step down following elections last week, having served his permitted two terms. He is set to be replaced by former president John Mahama, after rival, and vice-president,Mahamudu Bawumia conceded defeat.
The outlook for members of the LGBTQ+ community is unlikely to improve much, given that Mahama recently told clergymen that gay marriage and being transgender were against his religious beliefs.
“The faith I have will not allow me to accept a man marrying a man, and a woman marrying a woman,” he said, according to Reuters.
“I don’t believe anybody can get up and say I feel like a man although I was born a woman and so I will change and become a man,” he added.
However, he did not say whether he would sign the bill that would criminalise same-sex relations, being transgender and advocating for LGBTQ rights.
Kazakhstan
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a bill effectively preventing queer couple adopting. (Getty)
While same-sex sexual activity is legal in the central Asian country, LGBTQ+ people can donate blood, and there is an equal age of consent, gay marriages are not permitted and a large majority of the population don’t see homosexuality as justifiable.
And, in February, Kazakhstan president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed into lawa ban on adoption for anyone who does not adhere to a “non-traditional” sexual orientation, effectively making it impossible for queer couples to take in a child.
Iraq
President Abdul Latif Rashid oversaw a tightening of laws against LGBTQ+ people. (Getty)
Iraq has long been considered one of the worst countries for LGBTQ+ people. But things became worse this year when homosexuality was codified as illegal.
The law, ratified by president Abdul Latif Rashid in June, specifically criminalised any practice of homosexuality and transsexuality, with a maximum of 15 years in prison for those convicted. The government also made it illegal to change gender markers on documents and banned gender-affirming care.
Human Rights Watch researcher Sarah Sanbar described the law was a “horrific development [and an] attack on human rights”.
United Kingdom
Keir Starmer hasn’t made life any easier for trans people in the UK. (Getty)
Despite the removal of the transphobic Conservative government in July, LGBTQ+ rights in the UK have not improved.
This was nowhere better represented than in ILGA-Europe’s annual Rainbow Map, which showed that Britain had plummeted the best place in Europe for LGBTQ+ rights in 2015, to sixteenth place today.
That fall wasn’t helped by the new government’s continued animosity towards transgender people. This year, health secretary Wes Streeting, who has said he does not believe trans women are women, extended a ban on puberty blockers for transgender under-18s, despite there being no definitive evidence that they are harmful.
And prime minister Keir Starmer’s record on LGBTQ+ rights is somewhat chequered. Soon after entering Downing Street, he told The Times that women who have not undergone gender confirmation surgery should not be allowed in female-only spaces, including toilets.
“They don’t have that right. They shouldn’t. That’s why I’ve always said biological women’s spaces need to be protected,” he said.
And, according to The Independent, he has said: “I’m not in favour of ideology being taught in our schools on gender.”
