List of countries that passed laws against LGBTQ+

National laws criminalizing consensual same-sex relations between adults exist in a minimum of 67 countries.

These laws may specifically target certain sexual acts, and in some cases, they are general and open to interpretation.

Penalties range from fines to life imprisonment and, in extreme cases, the death penalty.

Law enforcement agencies in certain places actively pursue and prosecute individuals suspected of being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

In other instances, while the laws are rarely enforced, they still have severe consequences for LGBTQ+ people, affecting their access to employment, health services, and police protection.

Furthermore, at least nine countries have national laws criminalizing forms of gender expression that disproportionately impact transgender and gender nonconforming individuals. For example:

1. Southern and Western Asia (Brunei and Oman) criminalize “posing as” or “imitating” a person of a different sex.
   

2.Saudi Arabia routinely arrests people based on their gender expression.

3. Malaysia penalizes “posing as” a different sex in its Sharia codes.

3. Nigeria criminalizes transgender and gender nonconforming people in its northern states under Sharia.

4. South Sudan applies such laws only to men who “dress as women.”

5. Malawi criminalizes men who wear their hair long.

6. Tonga prohibits any “male person” from presenting as a female while “soliciting for an immoral purpose.”

7. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has laws prohibiting men from “posing as” women in women-only spaces, which they have used to prosecute gay and transgender people even in mixed-gender spaces.

Additionally, 15 countries maintain unequal ages of consent, imposing a higher bar for same-sex couples than different-sex couples or for anal sex compared to vaginal sex.

This includes countries like Canada and Chile.

In 11 states of the United States, unenforceable laws prohibiting consensual same-sex conduct remain on the books despite a 2003 Supreme Court decision that found such laws unconstitutional.

However, in Ghana, the law to criminalize lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activities and criminalizes their promotion, advocacy, and funding in the country awaits approval from President Akufo-Addo .