There seems to be a link between growing rights for LGBT's in some countries and worsening or removal of rights in others. Every advance seems to be accompanied by a backlash. To a certain extent that is what is happening on a global scale now--the advances that are being made in some parts of the world encourage a backlash in other parts of the world.
There are more than 75 countries where homosexuality is still criminalised. Forty-two of them are former British colonies so we can see where the legacy comes from. The number of countries legalising same-sex marriage continues to grow, with Denmark, Brazil, France and New Zealand just some that joined more progressive countries that had legalised earlier.
There are some places in the world where LGBT rights are worsening. In Iran, a place where homosexuality is punishable by death, this year the country's official who works on human rights described homosexuality as "an illness that should be cured". Gay rights are no better in many other Middle Eastern countries. There are 28 African countries where homosexuality is illegal.
Parts of Latin America remain the standard for equality for LGBT rights. Argentina's Gender Identity Law 2012 allowed the change of gender on birth certificates for transgender people. It also legalised same-sex marriage in 2010, giving same-sex couples the same rights as opposite-sex couples, including the right to adopt children. Uruguay and Mexico City also allow equal marriage and adoption.
In Asia, LGBT groups are making progress, if slowly. Last year, Vietnam saw its first gay pride rally and this year's event will launch a campaign for equality in employment. There is rumour that the country's ministry of justice has backed plans to legalise gay marriage, after the ministry of health came out for marriage equality in April.
In Russia, gay rights are moving further away from other European countries. Gay teenagers are being tortured and forcibly outed on the Internet against a backdrop of laws that look completely out of step with the rest of Europe. In what is being described as rolling the "status of LGBT people back to the Stalin era", President Putin has passed a number of anti-gay laws, including legislation that punishes people and groups that distribute information considered "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations". The country also now has powers to arrest and detain foreign citizens believed to be gay, or "pro-gay".
We have a US president who supports gay marriage, and now a pope who, if not exactly signing up to equality for all, is at least starting to talk in language less inflammatory than his predecessor. "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?" he told an assembled group of journalists on the papal plane back from his tour of Brazil. Then he went on to criticise the gay "lobby" and said he wasn't going to break with the catechism that said "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered". Still, for a brief moment it looked like a minor breakthrough.
There is a widening gap currently between those places in the world where strides are being made for equality and those where a raft of anti-homosexuality legislation is coming into force. Perhaps the dichotomy is inter-connected whereas one movement moves toward improvement the other is proportionately challenged. There is no denying that whether positive or negative, the energy around homosexual equality is running high. Who knows where we will end up?
