We Made Gains This Year

In some places you would not expect.

From Bhutan to Botswana, LGBTQ rights advanced in unexpected places in 2021
DW
December 27, 2021

From accepting a transgender mayor in Bangladesh, restoring gay rights in the US to decriminalizing homosexuality in Botswana, several countries have offered glimmers of hope this year in advancing LGBTQ rights.

Across the world, gay people have gained many protections with changes in laws and norms surrounding the issue of same-sex marriage, discrimination and equal rights. Global acceptance of the LGBTQ community, an acronym meaning lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning, is on the rise, according to the US-based Pew Research Center.

So the article lead me to the PEW website and what I found was an old article from last year...

The Global Divide on Homosexuality Persists
But increasing acceptance in many countries over past two decades
By Jacob Poushter and Nicholas Kent
June 22, 2020

Despite major changes in laws and norms surrounding the issue of same-sex marriage and the rights of LGBT people around the world, public opinion on the acceptance of homosexuality in society remains sharply divided by country, region and economic development.

As it was in 2013, when the question was last asked, attitudes on the acceptance of homosexuality are shaped by the country in which people live. Those in Western Europe and the Americas are generally more accepting of homosexuality than are those in Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. And publics in the Asia-Pacific region generally are split. This is a function not only of economic development of nations, but also religious and political attitudes.

Well yeah, I think that we knew that already eastern Europe was under an authoritarian yoke for generations where non-conformity is not tolerated. While Africa, the middle east, and western Asia are all under conservative religions. But as people reject religion they become more tolerant of people who are different from them.

Many of the countries surveyed in 2002 and 2019 have seen a double-digit increase in acceptance of homosexuality. This includes a 21-point increase since 2002 in South Africa and a 19-point increase in South Korea over the same time period. India also saw a 22-point increase since 2014, the first time the question was asked of a nationally representative sample there.

There also have been fairly large shifts in acceptance of homosexuality over the past 17 years in two very different places: Mexico and Japan. In both countries, just over half said they accepted homosexuality in 2002, but now closer to seven-in-ten say this.

In Kenya, only 1 in 100 said homosexuality should be accepted in 2002, compared with 14% who say this now. (For more on acceptance of homosexuality over time among all the countries surveyed, see Appendix A.)

The DW article goes on to state,

The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan became the latest Asian nation to decriminalize homosexuality this year. In February, King Druk Gyalpo signed off on a law passed by lawmakers, amending a line from Bhutan's penal code that criminalized "sodomy or any other sexual conduct that is against the order of nature," previously treated as a reference to gay sex.

Activists have hailed the move in a country where stigma and discrimination are rife and it's common for gay people to be blackmailed. Many say the country now needs to begin the hard work of fighting homophobia.

Nazrul Islam Ritu, Bangladesh's first transgender mayor, hopes her rise will empower the country's 'Hijra' community

Bangladesh elected its first transgender mayor in 2021. Nazrul Islam Ritu, who is "third gender," the official designation for transgender people in the Muslim-majority nation, beat her rival in a landslide election in November to become mayor of the small rural town of Trilochanpur in western Bangladesh, where she was born.

In Europe…

Switzerland became one of the last remaining nations in Western Europe to approve same-sex marriage in September, with nearly two-thirds of voters backing it in a referendum. The law change will allow same-sex couples to marry in civil ceremonies and provide them with the same rights as other married couples. Foreign spouses will become eligible to apply for citizenship through a simplified procedure, and same-sex couples will be permitted to jointly adopt.

In June, France passed a law that expanded access to its free fertility treatments, such as artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization (IVF), to women in same-sex relationships and single women. The procedure was previously reserved for infertile heterosexual couples, forcing lesbian couples and single women to shop abroad for IVF treatment.

Africa

Botswana's court of appeal in November upheld a 2019 ruling that decriminalized same-sex relationships, in what was hailed as a major victory for gay rights campaigners on the continent. Before the 2019 High Court ruling, engaging in gay sex in Botswana was punishable by up to seven years in prison.

The bench of five judges unanimously ruled that criminalizing same-sex relationships was a violation of the constitutional rights of LGBTQ individuals to dignity, liberty, privacy and equality.

[…]

In February, a new criminal code went into effect in Angola after the parliament passed it in 2019 and the president signed it into law in November 2020. The new penal code scraps a 133-year-old passage banning same-sex relations, put in place when the southwest African nation was still a Portuguese colony. It also contains full anti-discrimination protections on the basis of sexuality and gender identity.

There is headway being made, but in eastern Europe there are still a whole slew of anti-LGBTQ+ laws on the books and in parts of Poland there are still regions where they claim to be “LGBTQ+” free zones.

We are making headway but it seems like it is three steps forward and two steps backward.