Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors.
Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.

Responsive image


Violence against LGBTQ people

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) people frequently experience violence directed toward their sexuality, gender identity, or gender expression.[1][2] This violence may be enacted by the state, as in laws prescribing punishment for homosexual acts, or by individuals. It may be psychological or physical and motivated by biphobia, gayphobia, homophobia, lesbophobia, aphobia, and transphobia. Influencing factors may be cultural, religious,[3][4][5] or political mores and biases.[6]

Currently, homosexual acts are legal in almost all Western countries, and in many of these countries violence against LGBTQ people is classified as a hate crime.[7] Outside the West, many countries are deemed potentially dangerous to their LGBTQ population due to both discriminatory legislation and threats of violence. These include countries where the dominant religion is Islam, most African countries (except South Africa), most Asian countries (except such LGBT-friendly countries as Israel, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines), and some former communist countries such as Russia, Poland (LGBTQ-free zone), Serbia, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina.[5] Such violence is often associated with religious condemnation of homosexuality or conservative social attitudes that portray homosexuality as an illness or a character flaw.[3][4]

Historically, state-sanctioned persecution of homosexuals was mostly limited to male homosexuality, termed "sodomy". During the Middle Ages and the early modern period, the penalty for sodomy was usually death.[8] During the modern period (from the 19th century to the mid-20th century) in the Western world, the penalty was usually a fine or imprisonment. There was a drop in locations where homosexual acts remained illegal from 2009 when there were 80 countries worldwide (notably throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and in most of Africa, but also in some of the Caribbean and Oceania) with five carrying the death penalty[9] to 2016 when 72 countries criminalized consensual sexual acts between adults of the same sex.[10]

Brazil, a country with LGBTQ rights protections and legal same-sex marriage, is reported by Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB) to have the world's highest LGBTQ murder rate, with more than 380 murders in 2017 alone, an increase of 30% compared to 2016.[11] Gay men experience potentially fatal violence in several places in the world, for example by ISIS, stoning by Nigeria, and others.[12][13][14]

In some countries, 85% of LGBTQ students experience homophobic and transphobic violence in school, and 45% of transgender students drop out of school.[15]

  1. ^ Meyer, Doug (December 2012). "An Intersectional Analysis of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) People's Evaluations of Anti-Queer Violence". Gender & Society. 26 (6): 849–873. doi:10.1177/0891243212461299. S2CID 145812781.
  2. ^ "Violence Against the Transgender Community in 2019 | Human Rights Campaign". Archived from the original on October 6, 2020. Retrieved June 17, 2020.
  3. ^ a b Stewart, Chuck (2009). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of LGBT Issues Worldwide (Volume 1). Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Press. pp. 4, 7, 85–86. ISBN 978-0313342318.
  4. ^ a b Stewart, Chuck (2009). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of LGBT Issues Worldwide (Volume 2). Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Press. pp. 6–7, 10–11. ISBN 978-0313342356.
  5. ^ a b Stewart, Chuck (2009). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of LGBT Issues Worldwide (Volume 3). Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Press. pp. 1, 6–7, 36, 65, 70. ISBN 978-0-313-34231-8.
  6. ^ Meyer, Doug (2015). Violence against Queer People. Rutgers University Press. Archived from the original on May 15, 2019. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
  7. ^ Stotzer, R.: Comparison of love Crime Rates Across Protected and Unprotected Groups Archived August 11, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, Williams Institute, 2007–06. Retrieved on August 9, 2007.
  8. ^ Reggio, Michael (February 9, 1999). "History of the Death Penalty". PBS Frontline. Archived from the original on January 16, 2020. Retrieved February 6, 2020.
  9. ^ Radia, Kirit; Dwyer, Devin; Gorman, Elizabeth (June 19, 2009). "New Benefits for Same-Sex Couples May Be Hard to Implement Abroad". ABC News. Archived from the original on January 25, 2023. Retrieved January 2, 2023.
  10. ^ "ILGA publishes 2010 report on State sponsored homophobia throughout the world". International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. 2010. Archived from the original on March 23, 2014.
  11. ^ "Brazil has world's highest LGBT murder rate, with 100s killed in 2017 – MambaOnline – Gay South Africa online". MambaOnline – Gay South Africa online. January 24, 2018. Archived from the original on September 24, 2018. Retrieved March 29, 2018.
  12. ^ "ISIS Hurls Gay Men Off Buildings, Stones Them: Analysts". NBC News. August 26, 2015. Retrieved November 19, 2023.
  13. ^ ISIS throws gay men off buildings | CNN, March 5, 2015, retrieved November 19, 2023
  14. ^ Hazzad, Ardo (July 2, 2022). "Nigerian Islamic court orders death by stoning for men convicted of homosexuality". Reuters. Retrieved November 19, 2023.
  15. ^ "Report shows homophobic and transphobic violence in education to be a global problem". May 17, 2016. Archived from the original on October 18, 2020. Retrieved March 10, 2020.

Previous Page Next Page