Love locked down
While more and more countries around the world embrace LGBT people, some continue to deny their rights. Liberation cannot be halted forever
PETER TATCHELL
In western countries over the last two decades there has been huge progress towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality. But the global picture is much bleaker, with 72 countries still having a total prohibition on same-sex relations. Nearly half of them explicitly criminalise sexual acts both between men and between women. And in eight Muslim-majority countries, there is the death penalty for having sex with a person of the same gender.
Hundreds of millions of LGBT people around the world have no recognition of their human rights and no protection; in fact, they face criminalisation, harassment, discrimination and hate crime on a massive scale. Shockingly, even today, there is no international human rights convention that explicitly recognises that LGBT rights are human rights.