Six Nations in the Americas Still Criminalize LGBT2SQIA+ People. That Could Soon Change.

     The global fight for LGBT2SQIA+ rights continues in 2023. 2022 saw a historic number of victories in 27 nations around the world. In the Americas, the biggest victories came in the form of decriminalization of same-sex sexual relationships. In a back-to-back series of court rulings, the Caribbean island nations of Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Barbados saw their old, largely unenforced laws punishing consenting adults with prison time because of who they love struck down.

     With these rulings, the number of nations in the Americas that still have these laws on the books dropped by one-third, to six. While, like in the aforementioned three countries, the laws are largely unenforced, they loom large in the daily lives of LGBT2SQIA+ individuals who call these countries home. Also like the aforementioned three, all six are Caribbean nations: Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Guyana.

     In the former five island nations, the maximum penalty is ten years imprisonment, incarceration in a mental institution, and/or hard labor. In Guyana, the maximum penalty is life imprisonment. Nearly all of these laws are from the colonial era. While, as previously stated, largely unenforced, the Americas are supposed to serve as a beacon of democracy and human rights around the globe, and even having these laws directly contradicts that supposition.

     However, the momentum to change this is behind us. After three court decisions in neighboring countries, rising anti-colonial sentiment in the Caribbean, a re-established diplomatic advocacy for LGBT2SQIA+ rights globally on the part of the United States, and a growing human rights movement across Latin America and the Caribbean (including our expansion to Latin America), it has become clear that the end for this outdated, discriminatory legislation is inevitable.

     In Europe, same-sex sexual relationships have been decriminalized in every nation, while they are obviously not criminalized in Antarctica. In the Americas, as well as in Oceania, a handful of nations on each continent still outlaw the practice with unenforced laws that are easy enough to have repealed. The majority of nations in Asia have decriminalized loving who one loves, and Africa could soon follow suit. If, by 2030, the death penalty for LGBT2SQIA+ individuals is completely abolished worldwide, every nation on five continents has decriminalized same-sex relationships, and the overwhelming majority of African and Asian nations have done the same, it will be safe to call the 2020s a historic decade for LGBT2SQIA+ rights and for human rights.

     Don't just keep the faith; spread it.