Similarly, on June 2019, Botswana’s High Court overturned that nation’s colonial-era laws that criminalized “carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature.” 17, 2021, when Bhutan repealed its anti-sodomy law. The number of nations with anti-gay laws dropped to 71 on Feb. In Kazakhstan, both houses of parliament passed a bill “On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to their Health and Development,” but the Constitutional Council rejected it in May 2015, saying that the wording was too vague.Īs noted above, Libya and Nigeria also have anti-“gay propaganda” laws in addition to their laws outlawing same-sex intimacy. But if it became law, any type of distribution of positive information on same-sex relations, not just discussions in the presence of a minor, would become a crime punishable by fines and a jail sentence. In addition, in central Asia, Kyrgyzstan in October 2014 was on the verge of adopting an anti-“gay propaganda” law harsher than that in Russia.
(Mostly the lists differ only in relatively small ways, such as whether they are limited to United Nations member nations.) HISTORY: Recent history of many nations repealing or overturning those laws and a few nations newly adopting them.ĬOMPARISON: A comparison of this blog’s list with the similar list compiled by ILGA, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. THE LIST: A tally of nations with anti-homosexuality laws. Such laws apply in parts of Indonesia, so it is shown here in orange. Map of the 71 countries where sexual relations between people of the same sex are illegal.
Bhutan in the Himalayas and Gabon in central Africa are the most recent countries to have repealed their anti-gay laws. Gay sex is no longer as widely criminalized as it used to be, but a total of 71 nations still have laws against it.