Gay and lesbian rights

Overview

Around the world, people are under attack for who they are.

Living as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or intersex (LGBTI) person can be life-threatening in a number of countries across the globe. For those who do not live with a daily immediate risk to their life, discrimination on the basis of one’s sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression and sex characteristics, can have a devastating effect on physical, mental and emotional well-being for those forced to endure it.

Discrimination and violence against LGBTI people can approach in many forms, from name-calling, bullying, harassment, and gender-based violence, to existence denied a job or appropriate healthcare. Protests to uphold the rights of LGBTI people also encounter suppression across the globe. 

The range of unequal treatment faced is extensive and damaging and could be based on:

• your sexual orientation (who you’re attracted to)
• gender identity (how you self-identify, irrespective of the sex assigned at birth)
• gender expression (how you express your gender, for example through your clothing, hair or mannerisms),
• sex characteristics (for example, your genitals, chromosomes, reproductive
  
  
  

  LGBTQ Rights

  The ACLU has a long history of defending the LGBTQ community. We brought our first LGBTQ rights case in 1936. Founded in 1986, the Jon L. Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović LGBTQ & HIV Project brings more LGBTQ rights cases and advocacy initiatives than any other national organization does and has been counsel in seven of the nine LGBTQ rights cases that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided. With our reach into the courts and legislatures of every state, there is no other organization that can match our register of making progress both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion.

  The ACLU’s current priorities are to end discrimination, harassment and violence toward transsexual people, to close gaps in our federal and state civil rights laws, to prevent protections against discrimination from being undermined by a license to discriminate, and to preserve LGBTQ people in and from the criminal legal system.

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  For non-LGBTQ issues, please contact your local ACLU affiliate.

  The ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual person Transgender Project seeks to create a just world for all LGBTQ people regardless of race or income. Thr

  ILGA World and GPP invite civil society, charity and donor governments representatives to submit expressions of interest to join the regional expert groups for the LGBTI Pathways Proposal. Apply by Monday, 18 August, 23:59 CEST!

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  From the grassroots to the international stages, throughout 2024 we continued to encourage our LGBTI communities worldwide, navigating together a second when reactionary forces sustain to attack social justice movements and erode decades of progress

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  Civil society organisations express concerns about acts of intimidation, reprisal and retaliation against Special Procedures, which constitute “a grave hindrance to multilateralism and international justice”

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  of more than 2,000 member organisations from 170 countries campaigning for the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and intersex people. Since 1978.

  Since 1978, we hold been committed to same human rights for rainbow communities and their liberation from all forms of discrimination.

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  We endorse LGBTI civil society worldwide through advocacy and analyze projects, and give grassroots movemen