Planning a Trip? Here Are 77 Countries Were Being Gay is Illegal

 No.64 Jamaica. Here the laws and many of it’s citizens have gone after the LGBT Community in deadly ways even though it is close to the USA and has roots to a Gay friendly west.

By staying away from these countries not only impacts your amount of safety if you are LGBT but it also impacts the money they get to prosecute and persecute gays. In some of these countries it wont matter much but in others in which tourism is very important you could be sending a message, particularly if you go thru the process of letting your travel agent or their turism office know why you wont go there. But if you just avoid it they will feel a pinch and will figure out from where is coming from. Only you can make the choice and the information provided here is to help you make a good choice for you. 

Africa

1 Algeria

2 Angola

3 Botswana

4 Burundi

5 Cameroon

6 Comoros

7 Egypt

8 Eritrea

9 Ethiopia

10 Gambia

11 Ghana

12 Guinea

13 Kenya

14 Liberia

15 Libya

16 Malawi (enforcement of law suspended)

17 Mauritania

18 Mauritius

19 Morocco

20 Namibia

21 Nigeria

22 Senegal

23 Sierra Leone

24 Somalia

25 South Sudan

26 Sudan

27 Swaziland

28 Tanzania

29 Togo

30 Tunisia

31 Uganda

32 Zambia

33 Zimbabwe

Asia, including the Middle East

34 Afghanistan

35 Bangladesh

36 Bhutan

37 Brunei

38 Daesh (or ISIS / ISIL)

39 India

40 Iran

41 Iraq

42 Kuwait

43 Lebanon (law ruled invalid in one court)

44 Malaysia

45 Maldives

46 Myanmar

47 Oman

48 Pakistan

49 Palestine/Gaza Strip

50 Qatar

51 Saudi Arabia

52 Singapore

53 Sri Lanka

54 Syria

55 Turkmenistan

56 United Arab Emirates

57 Uzbekistan

58 Yemen

Americas

59 Antigua & Barbuda

60 Barbados

61 Dominica (But see “Dominica leader: No enforcement of anti-gay law” )

62 Grenada

63 Guyana

64 Jamaica

65 St Kitts & Nevis

66 St Lucia

67 St Vincent & the Grenadines

68 Trinidad & Tobago

In the United States, anti-sodomy laws were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003, but they are still on the books in 13 states: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina,  Texas, Utah and Virginia. Conservative state legislators refuse to repeal the laws and, in some cases, police still enforce them.  In the past several years more than a dozen LGBT people were arrested for violating those laws, but the arrestees were freed because prosecutors won’t seek convictions based on defunct laws.

Oceania

69 Cook Islands

70 Indonesia (Aceh Province and South Sumatra)

71 Kirbati

72 Papua New Guinea

73 Samoa

74 Solomon Islands

75 Tonga

76 Tuvalu

Europe

No country in Europe has a law against homosexuality. The last European location with such a law was Northern Cyprus (recognized as a country only by Turkey), which repealed its law in January 2014.

Also in Europe and worth mentioning but not on the list of countries with laws against homosexuality are:

Russia, which enacted an anti-“gay propaganda” law in 2013 prohibiting any positive mention of homosexuality in the presence of minors, including online;

Lithuania, which has a similar law; in 2015, it considered but has not yet adopted a further law that would impose fines for any public display that “defies traditional family values.”

Ukraine, which considered such a law in 2012 and 2013, did not adopt it and seems to have dropped the issue.

Moldova, which adopted and then repealed such a law in 2013.

Belarus, which was discussing such a law in early 2016.

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. If that bill becomes 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 Kazakhstan, both house 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.

As noted above, Libya and Nigeria also have anti-“gay propaganda” laws in addition to their laws outlawing same-sex intimacy.