Lgbtqi rights
Around a third of countries in the world explicitly criminalise LGBT people in some form. While this achieved in a variety of ways, and enforced to varying degrees, wherever these laws exist they have a profoundly negative effect on the LGBT community.
How are LGBT people criminalised?
Laws which criminalise LGBT people are invariably framed in a way which criminalises sexual acts rather than identities. The specific framing of criminalising provisions varies from country to country, though frequent formulations include ‘sodomy’, ‘buggery’, ‘indecency’, ‘unnatural acts’, ‘homosexuality’, ‘lesbianism’, and ‘cross-dressing’.
In many cases, criminalising provisions are vaguely worded and unclear in scope, allowing a grand margin of interpretation by statute enforcement officers and judges, who are enabled to introduce their own prejudices when enforcing the law. Additionally, the existence of these provisions encourages police officers to act beyond the strict letter of the law, and arrest, charge, and prosecute people based upon their real or perceived sexual orientation or gender ide
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 support 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 commandment 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 articulate 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.
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