Social Movements & the Law

Free & Equal’s newest video – narrated by movie star Zachary Quinto – exposes just how much LGBT exclusion really costs. Rates of poverty, homelessness, depression and suicide have been found to be far higher among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people than in the general population. But it’s not just LGBT people who pay the price. We all do. Every LGBT child thrown out of home and forced to miss out on education is a loss for society. Every LGBT worker denied their rights is a lost opportunity to build a fairer and more productive economy. These losses are entirely self-inflicted. With different laws and policies in place and a different mind-set, we could and would achieve a more free and equal world – that is more prosperous too! For more info visit: https://www.unfe.org/the-price Special thanks to Zachary Quinto, Shape History and the Cutting Room Studios, New York. NB: For closed captions in additional languages, click the "CC" button in the bottom of the viewing screen and select language.

76 countries still criminalize consensual same-sex relationships and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people everywhere continue to suffer violent attacks and discriminatory treatment. In this simple, high-impact video from the UN human rights office, individuals from diverse backgrounds pose questions directly to the viewer designed to expose the nature of human rights violations suffered by LGBT people around the world. The video includes cameo appearances by UN Secretary-General and High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay. The UN's message: LGBT rights are human rights. Together we will build a world that is free and equal. You can watch this video with English, French, Spanish, Italian and Korean Captions by clicking the small, square "CC" button in the bottom of the YouTube screen and selecting language. Over the next days we will also be adding Chinese and Arabic. Keep checking the site for updates.

Trans people in Britain today have become a culture war 'issue'. Despite making up less than one per cent of the country's population, they are the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarized 'debate' which generates reliable controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals a simple fact: that we are having the wrong conversation, a conversation in which trans people themselves are reduced to a talking point and denied a meaningful voice. In this powerful new book, Shon Faye reclaims the idea of the 'transgender issue' to uncover the reality of what it means to be trans in a transphobic society. In doing so, she provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond. The Transgender Issue is a landmark work that signals the beginning of a new, healthier conversation about trans life. It is a manifesto for change, and a call for justice and solidarity between all marginalized people and minorities. Trans liberation, as Faye sees it, goes to the root of what our society is and what it could be; it offers the possibility of a more just, free and joyful world for all of us.

"Fifteen currently serving or retired LGBTQ presidents and chancellors in higher education consider whether there is something distinctive about LGBTQ leadership and attempt to draw insights and principles from their specific lived experiences. In essays across 12 topics, the authors address why LGBTQ leadership matters at this moment and, more broadly, why diversity, inclusion, and equity in leadership is important to meet today's challenges for higher education and human rights"--

"What is the price of living an authentic life? Ellen Krug knows . As a man named, "Ed," she had everything anyone could ever want: a soul mate's love, two beautiful daughters, a house in the best neighborhood, a successful trial lawyer's career -- a Grand Plan life so picture-pefect it inspired a beautiful pastel drawing. But there was a problem: "Ed" was a woman born into a male body. Finding inner peace meant Ed would have to become Ellen. It also meant losing that picture-perfect life. How could anyone make that choice, pay that kind of price? Then again, how could anyone not? Through what became a "gender journey," Ellen Krug discovered her true self and the honesty it takes to make life-changing decisions. Getting to Ellen is more than one person's story about some things lost and others gained. It's a glimpse into the life choices that all of us make -- whether or not we're transgender."

In Everyday Violence against Black and Latinx LGBT Communities, Siobhan Brooks argues that hate crimes and violence against Black and Latinx LGBT people are the products of institutions and ideologies that exist both outside and inside of Black and Latinx communities. Brooks analyzes families, educational systems, healthcare industries, and religious spaces as institutions that can perpetuate and transform the political and cultural beliefs and attitudes that engender violence toward LGBT Black and Latinx people--back cover.

Cruising the Library offers a highly innovative analysis of the history of sexuality and categories of sexual perversion through a critical examination of the Library of Congress and its cataloging practices. Taking the publication of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemologies of the Closet as emblematic of the Library's inability to account for sexual difference, Melissa Adler embarks upon a detailed critique of how cataloging systems have delimited and proscribed expressions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and race in a manner that mirrors psychiatric and sociological attempts to pathologize non-normative sexual practices and civil subjects. Taking up a parallel analysis, Adler utilizes Roderick A. Ferguson's Aberrations in Black as another example of how the Library of Congress fails to account for, and thereby "buries," difference. She examines the physical space of the Library as one that encourages forms of governmentality as theorized by Michel Foucault while also allowing for its utopian possibilities. Finally, she offers a brief but highly illuminating history of the Delta Collection. Likely established before the turn of the twentieth century and active until its gradual dissolution in the 1960s, the Delta Collection was a secret archive within the Library of Congress that housed materials confiscated by the United States Post Office and other federal agencies. These were materials deemed too obscene for public dissemination or general access. Adler reveals how the Delta Collection was used to regulate difference and squelch dissent in the McCarthy era while also linking it to evolving understandings of so-called perversion in the scientific study of sexual difference. Sophisticated, engrossing, and highly readable, Cruising the Library provides us with a critical understanding of library science, an alternative view of discourses around the history of sexuality, and an analysis of the relationship between governmentality and the cataloging of research and information--as well as categories of difference--in American culture.

Crisis and Care reveals what is possible when activists mobilise for the radical changes our society needs. In a time of great uncertainty, fear, and isolation, Queer activists organised for health equity, prison abolition, racial justice, and more. Crisis and Care anthologises not what happened during COVID-19, or why it happened, but rather how Queer activists responded in real time. It considers the necessity to memorialise resiliency as well as loss, hope as well as pain, to remember the strides forward as well as the steps back.

Transgender individuals and communities experience shocking amounts of violence and discrimination. This section offers some information on the staggering rates of violence that trans and non-binary people face, although it should be noted that data is limited. In addition to experiencing high rates of domestic and sexual violence, trans and non-binary people are often the targets of transphobic hate crimes and state violence. As always, listening to and believing survivors is critical.

The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey Report analyzes the experience of trans people in all 50 states as well as marginalized groups including: Black, Asian, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Latinx, American Indian, and Alaska Native respondents.

This year has been a heavy blow for most members of our communities and has left many of us struggling to survive, and trying to make a living amidst hostile contexts that became even more expulsive, unequal and violent.

This is a series of reports by the AALL FCIL-SIS Latin American Law Interest Group and Latino Caucus in a project monitoring COVID-19 legal responses in the Latin America and Caribbean region. By M…

As of March 2022, 15 states have restricted access to gender-affirming care or are currently considering laws that would do so. The bills carry severe penalties for health care providers, and sometimes families, who provide or seek out gender-affirming care for minors. This study estimates the number of transgender youth at risk of losing access to gender-affirming care under these bills.

Using data from the Generations Study and the Police-Public Contact Survey, this study examines the frequency and types of police interactions experienced by LGBQ people compared with the general U.S. population.

We work to prevent, respond to, and end all forms of violence against and within LGBTQ communities. We’re a national coalition of local member programs, affiliate organizations and individual affiliates who create systemic and social change. We strive to increase power, safety and resources through data analysis, policy advocacy, education and technical assistance.

MAP's latest report, Mapping Transgender Equality in the United States, looks at legal equality for transgender people across the country by examining the protections states provide based on gender identity.

LGBT people are criminalised in more than 70 jurisdictions worldwide. Find out where with our map.

WHAT STATES ARE DOING TO TACKLE VIOLENCE AND DISCRIMINATION AGAINST LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENDER AND INTERSEX PEOPLE

Institutional Assessment Worksheet Take a Closer Look: How Inclusive Is Your Library to Transgender and Non Binary Folks? Your Library Challenges for transgender folks Possibilities for change Policies -What do nondiscrimination policies include? -What do harassment and disruptions pol...

Read the Full Publication Read the Publication in Tagalog Read the Publication in Spanish This pioneering report by Outright International provides a global snapshot of what is known about “conversion therapy” around the world, including who is most vulnerable, what factors lead LGBTIQ people to choose or to be subjected to these harmful practices, what are the main forms of “conversion therapy,” and who are the main perpetrators.

Transgender individuals and communities experience shocking amounts of violence and discrimination. This section offers some information on the staggering rates of violence that trans and non-binary people face, although it should be noted that data is limited. In addition to experiencing high rates of domestic and sexual violence, trans and non-binary people are often the targets of transphobic hate crimes and state violence.

Despite major changes in LGBT rights around the world, acceptance of homosexuality remains sharply divided by country, region and economic development.

As part of Ipsos’ ongoing commitment to bringing voice to people through data, Ipsos undertook a survey on the topic of transgender people on our monthly global survey vehicle Global Advisor.

Using pooled data from the 2017 and 2018 National Crime Victimization Survey, researchers estimate the prevalence of personal and household victimizations among transgender people in the United States. It appeared in the American Journal of Public Health in March 2021.

As HRC continues to work toward justice and equality for transgender and gender non-conforming people, we mourn those we have lost.

Read through "An Epidemic of Violence: Fatal Violence Against Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People In the U.S. in 2020."

The impact of LGBTI human rights advances has been incremental and subtle, but one measure can be gleaned from the response of UN human rights institutions at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This report examines current research on violence against LGBTQ people in the U.S. and the use of the gay and trans panic defenses over the last six decades. It also provides model language that states may use to ban the gay and trans panic defenses through legislation.

LGBT well-being at the intersection of race

The Human Rights Campaign tracked at least 26 deaths of transgender people due to violence. The majority of victims were black transgender women.