From our point of view it seems like the battle for the gays is over. Across Europe, Australia, North America, and most of South America, things like gay marriage and homosexual adoption are now either legal or being openly discussed. Only the most narrow-minded people would still think it was acceptable to discriminate against someone purely on the basis of their sexual orientation.
The reality is a little different. Across the world, there are hundreds of governments that still do their best to make life miserable for LGBT people. From Sharia states that demand the death penalty to hard-line Christian nations that leave gay people to rot in disease-infested prisons, the Earth remains a very bleak, very dark place for millions of non-straight people.
10. India- For a country that calls itself as “the world’s biggest democracy,” India sure has a habit of shutting its minorities out of the democratic system. Case in point: the re-criminalization of homosexuality. In 2009, the High Court in Delhi threw out a 153-year-old law passed by the British colonial administration that made consenting sex between two adults of the same gender a crime. At the time, it was seen as a huge step forward for gay rights in the country, and many assumed it was the start of a new era of tolerance for LGBT people.
No such luck. Fast-forward to December 2013, and the Supreme Court has overruled the judgement, effectively making gay relationships illegal. Thanks to the efforts of a handful of bigots, anyone caught sharing with a kiss with someone of their own gender now faces up to 10 YEARS IN PRISON !!!
9.Northern Cyprus- Northern Cyprus is a disputed territory on the fringes of Europe—an unrecognized country that’s technically in the EU but also under Turkish occupation. It gets a special mention here for being the only place in the whole EU where state-sanctioned homophobia is still routinely practiced.
8.Singapore- Weirdly the law against gays is far from equal. Since 2007, it’s been perfectly legal for two women to have sex, but two guys who get hitched face up to two years in prison!!!
7.Russia- Russia is fast becoming the least gay-friendly place in the whole of Europe. In June this year, Vladimir Putin and his cronies followed in Stalin’s footsteps by introducing a law banning “homosexual propaganda.”
6. Jamaica-If you ever want to know what it’s like to live in constant, mind-numbing mortal terror, try declaring yourself gay in Jamaica. People suspected of being LGBT are frequently beaten and attacked with machetes. In 2010, a 16-year-old was hacked to death in his home for having “questionable relations” with another man. People have been knifed and set on fire under suspicion of being gay, and the funerals of gay men have previously been attacked by mobs armed with rocks and bottles.
5.Uganda-f you live in Uganda and have sex with someone of your gender, you can do 14 years to life in some of the most horrific prisons on Earth. People have been arbitrarily detained and deported for performing plays that even mention homosexuality, while police abuse of gay people is at an all-time high. LGBT rights activists are routinely harassed by the state and newspapers have previously been known to publish the names and addresses of homosexuals alongside incitements to lynching.
Even these horrors don’t compare to the “kill the gays” bill. A shameful piece of legislation that’s been on and off the table for a couple of years, the bill would prescribe the death penalty for homosexuality. In other words, there are lawmakers in Uganda who care so much about what other people do with their own genitals that they’re willing to slaughter them for it.
4. Nigera-According to PEW Research, Nigeria is the most homophobic place on Earth. When asked if homosexuality should be accepted by society, 98 percent of respondents said no.
3. Afganistan-Despite being the sort of place where it’s largely thought acceptable for old men to have sex with boys as young as nine, actually being gay is completely off limits. While areas controlled by the Karzai government no longer recommend the death penalty for homosexuals, there’s still a very real chance that coming out will result in being brutally murdered.
2. Turkey-There are many worse places to be gay than Turkey, but perhaps nowhere else is witnessing such a heartbreaking backward shift. Although being gay isn’t a crime, violence against homosexuals is alarmingly high and institutional brutality against transgender people is a depressing fact of life.
1. Iran- If gay people really are going to hell, that hell will probably look something like Iran. In the dark backwaters of the country, gay people are flogged, tortured, abused, and even executed with shocking regularity. Thanks to a 1987 law that legalized sex changes, parents of gay children routinely force them to undergo unwanted hormone treatment, chemical castration, and sexual reassignment surgery to escape being murdered by the regime’s thugs. Mass arrests for something as simple as going to a birthday party are common. In short, it is possibly the bleakest place in the world to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.
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