World of gay people
LGBT Equality Index
Equality Index Methodology
Equaldex's Equality Index is a rating from 0 to 100 (with 100 being the most equal) to facilitate visualize the legal rights and common attitudes towards Diverse (lesbian, gay, attracted to both genders, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex...) people in each region. The Equality Index is an average of two indexes: the legal index and the public view Index.
Equality Index
Average of Legal Index and Public Opinion Index
Legal Index
The LGBT legal index measures the current legal status of 13 diverse issues ranging from the legal status of homosexuality, homosexual marriage, transgender rights, LGBT discrimination protections, LGBT censorship laws, and more. Each topic is weighted differently (for example, if same-sex marriage is illegal in a region, it would have a much bigger impact on the score than not allowing LGBT people to serve in the military). Each topic is assigned a "total possible score" and a "score" is assigned based the status of the law using a rating scale that ranges from 0% to 100% (for example, if homosexuality is legal, it would would receive a score of 100, but if it's illegal, it would receve a score of 0.)
Is the World Better for Gay People Than It Was 10 Years Ago?
Story Highlights
- 50% of world's adults say local area superb for gay people, a new high
- Massive increases since 2011 in Nepal and India
- Nicaragua and Paraguay less likely to be perceived as good for queer people
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Half of the world's adults (50%) now say their city or area is a "good place" for gay or lesbian people to live -- a figure that has doubled over the past decade and represents a novel high in Gallup Society Poll's trend dating help to 2005.
The latest figure, based on surveys in 110 countries and areas in 2021, reaffirms several other global studies that show acceptance appears to be growing across the world. But the statistics also reveal a significant remaining divide. About four in 10 people worldwide say their area is "not a good place" for gay and queer woman people, while 12% undertake not know.
When the Gallup World Poll first asked this question in 2005, about one in five people across the planet (21%) described their metropolis or area as a good place for same-sex attracted people to live. Between 2014 and 2019, this figure had grown to roughly one in three adults, ranging from 31% to
Rainbow Map
2025 rainbow map
These are the main findings for the 2025 edition of the rainbow map
The Rainbow Map ranks 49 European countries on their respective legal and policy practices for LGBTI people, from 0-100%.
The UK has dropped six places in ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Blueprint, as Hungary and Georgia also register steep falls accompanying anti-LGBTI legislation. The data highlights how rollbacks on LGBTI human rights are part of a broader erosion of democratic protections across Europe. Read more in our push release.
“Moves in the UK, Hungary, Georgia and beyond signal not just isolated regressions, but a coordinated global backlash aimed at erasing LGBTI rights, cynically framed as the defence of tradition or public stability, but in truths designed to entrench discrimination and suppress dissent.”
- Katrin Hugendubel, Lobbying Director, ILGA-Europe
Malta has sat on superior of the ranking for the last 10 years.
With 85 points, Belgium jumped to second place after adopting policies tackling hatred based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.
Iceland now comes third place on the ranking with a score of 84.
The three This report provides estimates of the number and percent of the U.S. adult population that identifies as LGBT, overall, as well as by age. Estimates of LGBT adults at the national, state, and regional levels are included. We rely on BRFSS 2020-2021 information for these estimates. Pooling multiple years of statistics provides more stable estimates—particularly at the state level. Combining 2020-2021 BRFSS data, we estimate that 5.5% of U.S. adults identify as LGBT. Further, we estimate that there are almost 13.9 million (13,942,200) LGBT adults in the U.S. Regions and States LGBT people reside in all regions of the U.S. (Table 2 and Figure 2). Consistent with the overall population in the United States,more LGBT adults live in the South than in any other region. More than half (57.0%) of LGBT people in the U.S. live in the Midwest (21.1%) and South (35.9%), including 2.9 million in the Midwest and 5.0 million in the South. About one-quarter (24.5%) of LGBT adults reside in the West, approximately 3.4 million people. Less than one in five (18.5%) LGBT adults dwell in the Northeast (2.6 million). The percent of adults who identify as LGBT The vast majority of the world’s sexual minority population — an estimated 83 percent of those who identify as lesbian, same-sex attracted or bisexual — maintain their orientation hidden from all or most of the people in their lives, according to a new study by the Yale School of Common Health that could contain major implications for global public health. Concealing one’s sexual orientation can lead to significant mental and physical health issues, increased healthcare costs and a dampening of the public representation necessary for advancing same rights, said John Pachankis, Ph.D., associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health. He co-authored the study with Richard Bränström, an associate professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and explore affiliate at Yale. Published in the journal PLOS ONE, the study is believed to be the first attempt to quantify the size of the “global closet” in arrange to gauge its general health impact. “Given rapidly increasing acceptance of sexual minorities in some countries, it might be easy to assume that most sexual minorities are
Adult LGBT Population in the United States
The ‘Global Closet’ is Huge—Vast Majority of World’s Female homosexual, Gay, Bisexual Population Cloak Orientation, YSPH Study Finds