The Global Context For LGBT People

Gone are the days of movements around the world where we had to hustle around the bustling streets to fight for equal rights of the LGBT community, but it is most disheartening that even though we live at a time where their rights are legalised, they are still subjected to discrimination.

If we talk numbers here, it innumerable but it is also undeniable that we have made some progress and have come far from where we began. When Pope Francis was asked to speak about this legal issue at a time when various controversies were going around the world, he said, "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?", this is like a blessing in hard times.

In only around six countries around the world, transgender people can determine their legal gender; in the rest of the States, the government denies them their right to determine their name and gender. While this is saddening, what's worse is the fact that, in about 70 countries, it is still illegal to have sex with someone from the same sex.

While countries like Iran was against same-sex marriage for a long time and even had punishments of gruesome terms, countries like Uganda have made massive progress after years of battle against its criminalization. India struck down S.377 of IPC as unconstitutional, and there weren't any uprisings, nor protests and the country unanimously agreed to the decision taken by the Supreme Court. Malawi, Jamaica and Argentina are some states that have made remarkable progress concerning the rights of the LGBT community that is highly visible.

The United States of America has sanctioned many reasons for the LGBT community and holds less per cent people being bullied in the name of that, and this hasn't gone unnoticed. An organisation went around taking surveys and categorised countries into various types in its report. It included countries where homosexuality is illegal, countries where LGBT+ people risk death penalty, States where a same-sex couple could marry, countries where rights are under threat and countries where discrimination is unlawful.

These broad categories included almost all countries one could think of and the criteria and the reason why they were classified as such a nation was based on the level of discrimination, threats and opportunities that the inhabitants had. Some States have experienced protests, and there have been many struggles and protests to plead and ask for protection, but homophobia as a political tool is an alarming matter. Winning cases for them, tackling hate speeches, and combating gender-based violence has been some of the challenges that have been successfully overcome by some countries.

Even though we haven't had successes throughout and universally, the progress we have made can't go unnoticed. The global perspective of the LGBT community is quite diverse, and each country, just like each state has personal laws have made progress in different ways. If all of us come together to find a solution to our this, we can tackle the problem at a global level.