Rights for gays

LGBTQ+ Rights

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LGBTQ Rights

The ACLU has a long history of defending the LGBTQ community. We brought our first LGBTQ rights case in Founded in , the Jon L. Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović LGBTQ & HIV Project brings more LGBTQ rights cases and activism 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 record of making progress both in the courts of statute and in the court of public opinion.

The ACLU’s current priorities are to end discrimination, harassment and violence toward transgender people, to close gaps in our federal and declare civil rights laws, to prevent protections against discrimination from being undermined by a license to discriminate, and to protect 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 Trans Pro

LGBTQ+ rights

  • US Olympics officials quietly prevent trans women from competing in women’s sports

  • Irish Museum of Up-to-date Art rejects censorship claims after Derek Jarman film cancellation

  • ‘It’s a madhouse’: US state department workers reeling after Trump’s firings

  • ‘Queer people were living, loving, suffering, surviving – but invisible’: west Africa’s groundbreaking gay novel 20 years on

  • Flashback

    Susie McCabe looks back: ‘I knew very adv on that I was unlike from other girls. Everyone else did, too’’

  • Breaking the Binary: gather the founder behind a US theater company for trans and non-binary artists

  • ‘Profound alarm’: US veterans agency roiled by fight over anti-discrimination provisions

  • I hate to be the scowling lesbian at the feast – but here’s what worries me about the recent Austen adaptations

    Emma Brockes

  • Uniformed police officers were wrong to march in Pride event, high court rules

  • Gay man subjected to ‘exorcism’ at Sheffield church receives compensation

  • On Country: photography from Australia – in

    Gay rights 50 years on: 10 ways in which the UK has changed

    Definitions can sometimes be tricky though - the UK is included despite Northern Ireland's ban. Brazil and Mexico are also on ILGA's list because "through one legal route or another, it appears to be possible to partner in most jurisdictions".

    Germany is not included - MPs gave their approval to same-sex marriage earlier this year but the statute does not come into force until October.

    Countries where gay marriage is legal

    Netherlands

    Belgium

    Canada, Spain

    South Africa

    Norway, Sweden

    Iceland, Portugal, Argentina

    Denmark

    Uruguay, New Zealand, France, Brazil

    UK (excluding Northern Ireland)

    Luxembourg, Ireland, Mexico, USA

    Colombia

    Finland

    A further 28 countries guarantee some civil-partnership recognition according to ILGA.