Gay People Are Hunted Down and Beaten in a Country Once a Refuge

The PR person for Latinos pro Derechos Humanos, Manolo Gomez, who’d arranged the radio “debate,” was beaten and left for dead in an alley. His car was firebombed. He was also fired from his job as an editor for the Spanish-language edition of Cosmopolitan magazine because he’d made public declarations about his homosexuality.

A thousand gays—many of them more willing to come out for a party than they’d been to come out for campaign work—dressed formally in suits and ties despite the South Florida weather, now stood stunned and tearful, looking up at the screens that told them that most of their neighbors loathed them.

These communities were suppressed and erased by the British Empire and its harmful views on gender identity and sexuality. But the damage done by the legacy of homophobia and transphobia introduced by British colonialism doesn’t only live in the past. There are 64 countries around the world that still criminalise homosexuality, and many of them are