Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Ecuador have evolved significantly in the past decades. Both male and female forms of same-sex sexual activity are legal in Ecuador and same-sex couples can enter into civil unions and same-sex marriages.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Zimbabwe face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. Since 1995, the Government of Zimbabwe has carried out campaigns against LGBT rights. Sodomy is classified as unlawful sexual conduct and defined in the Criminal Code as either anal sexual intercourse or any "indecent act" between consenting adults. Since 1995, the government has carried out campaigns against both homosexual men and women.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Argentina rank among the highest in the world. Upon legalising same-sex marriage on 15 July 2010, Argentina became the first country in Latin America, the second in the Americas, and the tenth in the world to do so. Following Argentina's transition to a democracy in 1983, its laws have become more inclusive and accepting of LGBT people, as has public opinion.
Barbara Gittings was a prominent American activist for LGBT equality. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine The Ladder from 1963 to 1966, and worked closely with Frank Kameny in the 1960s on the first picket lines that brought attention to the ban on employment of gay people by the largest employer in the US at that time: the United States government. Her early experiences with trying to learn more about lesbianism fueled her lifetime work with libraries. In the 1970s, Gittings was most involved in the American Library Association, especially its gay caucus, the first such in a professional organization, in order to promote positive literature about homosexuality in libraries. She was a part of the movement to get the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality as a mental illness in 1972. Her self-described life mission was to tear away the "shroud of invisibility" related to homosexuality, which had theretofore been associated with crime and mental illness.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the People's Republic of China (PRC) face legal and social challenges that are not experienced by non-LGBT residents. While both male and female same-sex sexual activity are legal, same-sex couples are currently unable to marry or adopt, and households headed by such couples are ineligible for the same legal protections available to heterosexual couples. No explicit anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people are present in its legal system, nor do hate crime laws cover sexual orientation or gender identity.
Laws governing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights are complex and diverse in the Americas, and acceptance of LGBT persons varies widely.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in Ecuador since 8 July 2019 in accordance with a Constitutional Court ruling issued on 12 June 2019 that the ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional under the Constitution of Ecuador. The ruling took effect upon publication in the government gazette on 8 July. Ecuador became the fifth country in South America to allow same-sex couples to marry, after Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Colombia, but adoption by married couples remains restricted to opposite-sex couples. The country has also recognized same-sex civil unions since 2008.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Namibia have limited legal protections. Sexual contact between men is criminalised within Namibia, although this law is generally unenforced. Discrimination based on sexual orientation is banned in Namibia but not for gender identity.
Corrective rape, also called curative rape or homophobic rape, is a hate crime in which somebody is raped because of their perceived sexual orientation. The common intended consequence of the rape, as claimed by the perpetrator, is to turn the person heterosexual.
The Core Issues Trust is a British Christian fundamentalist organisation that provides conversion therapy for LGBT people.
The first English-language use of the word "bisexual" to refer to sexual orientation occurred in 1892.
Diane Marie Rodríguez Zambrano is an Ecuadorian activist and politician who focuses on human rights and LGBT rights in Ecuador. She is the transgender chairwoman of the Silhouette X Association and a representative of the Observatory LGBTI of Ecuador. In 2009, she created a legal precedent in favor of the transgender population, to sue the Civil Registry to change her birth name to her present name. In 2017, she was elected as the first trans member of the National Assembly of Ecuador, and the second LGBT member after Sandra Alvarez Monsalve, who was elected as an alternate assembly member in 2009. She completed her mandate in 2021.
LGBT in Argentina refers to the diversity of practices, militancies and cultural assessments on sexual diversity that were historically deployed in the territory that is currently the Argentine Republic. It is particularly difficult to find information on the incidence of homosexuality in societies from Hispanic America as a result of the anti-homosexual taboo derived from Christian morality, so most of the historical sources of its existence are found in acts of repression and punishment. One of the main conflicts encountered by LGBT history researchers is the use of modern concepts that were non-existent to people from the past, such as "homosexual", "transgender" and "travesti", falling into an anachronism. Non-heterosexuality was historically characterized as a public enemy: when power was exercised by the Catholic Church, it was regarded as a sin; during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when it was in the hands of positivist thought, it was viewed as a disease; and later, with the advent of civil society, it became a crime.
The following is a timeline of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) history in the 20th century.
Conversion therapy is the pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. As of April 2024, twenty-eight countries have bans on conversion therapy, fourteen of them ban the practice by any person: Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Malta, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal and Norway; Eight ban its practice by medical professionals only; Albania, Brazil, Chile, India, Italy, Israel, Vietnam and Taiwan; another seven: Argentina, Fiji, Nauru, Paraguay, Samoa, Switzerland, and Uruguay have indirect bans in that diagnoses based solely on sexual orientation or gender identity are banned without specifically banning conversion therapy, this effectively amounts to a ban on health professionals since they would not generally engage in therapy without a diagnosis. In addition, some jurisdictions within Australia and the United States also ban conversion therapy. In China and South Africa case law has found conversion therapy to be unlawful. Bills banning conversion therapy are being considered in Ireland, Poland, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
This article presents a timeline of the most relevant events in the history of LGBT people in Ecuador. The earliest manifestations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Ecuador were in the pre-Columbian era, in cultures such as Valdivia, Tumaco-La Tolita, and Bahía, of which evidence has been found suggesting that homosexuality was common among its members. Documents by Hispanic chroniclers and historians—such as Pedro Cieza de León, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, and Garcilaso de la Vega—point to the Manteño-Huancavilca culture in particular as one in which homosexuality was openly practiced and accepted. However, with the Spanish conquest, a system of repression was established against anyone who practiced homosexuality in the territories that currently make up Ecuador.
