LGBT rights by country or territory

Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction – encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality.

Notably, , 28 countries recognize same-sex marriage, they are: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Greenland, 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, 6 countries effectively impose the death penalty on consensual same-sex sexual acts, with three in Asia (Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen) and three in Africa (Nigeria (the northern states), Sudan and Somalia (Jubaland region)). In addition, the death penalty is a possible punishment in 6 other countries: Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Iraq has been removed from this list following the elimination of the Islamic State (ISIL/ISIS), it remains as a "de facto" criminalising country due to reports of State prosecution using laws on public indecency, prostitution or others.

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:

 laws concerning the recognition of same-sex relationships, including same-sex marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships
 laws concerning LGBT parenting, including adoption by LGBT people
 anti-discrimination laws in employment, housing, education, public accommodations
 anti-bullying legislation to protect LGBT children at school
 hate crime laws imposing enhanced criminal penalties for prejudice-motivated violence against LGBT people
 bathroom bills affecting access to sex-segregated facilities by transgender people
 laws related to sexual orientation and military service
 laws concerning access to assisted reproductive technology
 sodomy laws that penalize consensual same-sex sexual activity
 age of consent laws that may impose higher ages for same-sex sexual activity
 laws regarding donation of blood by men who have sex with men
 laws concerning access to sex reassignment surgery and hormone replacement therapy
 legal recognition and accommodation of reassigned gender.

History of LGBT-related laws

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 (Politics II 1269b). H. D. Rankin in Celts and the Classical World notes that "Athenaeus echoes this comment (603a) and so does Ammianus (30.9). 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 (Bibliotheca historica 5:32), wrote that Celtic women were beautiful but that the men preferred to sleep together. Diodorus went further, stating that "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 have much harsher punishment. The Dharmsastras especially the later ones prescribed 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 (the Torah) forbids men from lying with men (i.e., from having intercourse) 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 tuned into a pillar of salt because she turned back to watch the cities' destruction. In Deuteronomy 22:5, cross-dressing is condemned as "abominable".

Ancient Persia
In Persia, homosexuality and homoerotic expressions were tolerated in numerous public places, from monasteries and seminaries to taverns, military camps, bathhouses, and coffee houses. In the early Safavid era (1501–1723), male houses of prostitution (amrad khane) were legally recognized and paid taxes. Persian poets, such as Sa'di (d. 1291), Hafiz (d. 1389), and Jami (d. 1492), wrote poems replete with homoerotic allusions. The two most commonly documented forms were commercial sex with transgender young males or males enacting transgender roles exemplified by the köçeks and Sufi spiritual practices in which the practitioner admired the form of a beautiful boy in order to enter ecstatic states and glimpse the beauty of God.

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 (and) convicted him, they shall lie with him (and) 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 (stuprum) 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 (populares) 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 (2nd century BC) 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 (with a freedman Pythagoras) 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.

DR Congo 
E. E. Evans-Pritchard 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 the elders to whom he spoke.

Feudal Japan 
In feudal Japan, homosexuality was recognized, between equals (bi-do), in terms of pederasty (wakashudo), and in terms of prostitution. The younger partner in a pederastic relationship often was expected to make the first move; the opposite was true in ancient Greece. In religious circles, same-sex love spread to the warrior (samurai) class, where it was customary for a boy in the wakashū age category to undergo training in the martial arts by apprenticing to a more experienced adult man. The man was permitted, if the boy agreed, to take the boy as his lover until he came of age; this relationship, often formalized in a "brotherhood contract", was expected to be exclusive, with both partners swearing to take no other (male) lovers.

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 many traditional Melanesian cultures a prepubertal boy would be paired with an older adolescent who would become his mentor and who would "inseminate" him (orally, anally, or topically, depending on the tribe) over a number of years in order for the younger to also reach puberty.

Global LGBT rights maps

Timeline

LGBT-related laws by country or territory

Africa

Americas

Asia

Europe

Oceania

See also

 Violence against LGBT people
 Buggery
 Civil union
 Heterosexism
 Homophobia
 Intersex human rights
 Movements for civil rights
 Transphobia
 List of human rights articles by country
 List of LGBT rights articles by region
 List of transgender-rights organizations
 LGBT people in prison
 Religion and homosexuality
 Same-sex marriage
 Sexual revolution
 Socialism and LGBT rights
 Societal attitudes toward homosexuality
 Status of same-sex marriage
 Yogyakarta Principles

Notes

References

External links

 International Lesbian and Gay Association
 State-sponsored Homophobia report (2015 edition)
 Lesbian and Gay Rights in the World map (2015 edition)
 
 Amnesty International USA: LGBT legal status around the world — interactive map
 GayLawNet: Laws — information by country
 Human Rights Watch on LGBT Rights
 International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission
 Resource links — for researching legal information
International Commission of Jurists, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Justice – A Comparative Law Casebook
United Nations Human Rights Council, Discriminatory laws and practices and acts of violence against individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity, an annual report
The United Nations, Living Free and Equal: What States Are Doing to Tackle Violence and Discrimination against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex People, November 2016

 
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