I was looking for a way to check a website where I can find Gay-friendly countries when one of my friends asked me as I have built the Visa List. Surprisingly I found very few blogs and they had very few countries and didn't tell me how safe every country is. So I decided to build a full functionality where you can find each and every country with their travel ranking with their civil rights, discrimination, and persecution against gay people. You can sort by most and least friendly and visualize it on a map.
I would love to get feedback and improve the travel experience for LGBT+ community.
I like the design and intent, but I'm not sure mapping the scores to percentages works. I can't see how the UK's equal age of consent [since 2000] works out at '67%' for example.
I'm also pretty sceptical of the underlying data anyway: I'm also perplexed by the idea that the UK has a significant negative religious influence, and I'm pretty sure Pride is banned in Saudi Arabia
It also said sorry for offending people very quickly afterwards, and more to the point has tiny and declining attendance and minimal impact on attitudes towards homosexual tourists. The idea that it's more hostile and influential on the subject of homosexuality than, say, the Catholic church in most Catholic majority countries doesn't really stack up.
It's the official state religion and is represented in the house of lords. That's real actual power, albeit moderated by the rest of the HoL. And, while they apologised, they stuck by that announcement.
We also have Catholic churches here, who've made similar pronouncements about relationships of gay people.
We've had a long running demonstration outside primary schools by Muslim people complaining about age appropriate lessons about relationships.
A transwoman was ostracized by her orthodox Jewish community to the point where she was unable to see her children. Despite winning the various court cases she's now given up trying to have contact with her children.
Religious intolerance of LGBTQ relationships is widespread in the UK across most religions.
Nobody is saying that religious prejudice in the UK is nonexistent. What I am saying is the data source's conclusion that the UK has a high level of religious prejudice not found in the rest of Western Europe is palpably absurd.
'But I have to worry about the power of bishops in the House of Lords', said no tourist ever.
EDIT: Also, it's weird to discount the fact that about one third of all schools in England are faith schools - most of those are either Church of England or Catholic. Ofsted requires schools to teach about same sex relationships, but Ofsted doesn't prevent schools from teaching that these relationships are sinful. https://www.secularism.org.uk/opinion/2019/07/faith-schools-...
It will also be useful for those wanting to avoid LGBT+ people and acceptance. I realize this isn't the intent, but it will be divisive (cause division).
I really don't think there's any meaningful level of tourists not traveling somewhere because they're scared of too many LGBT+ community members.
LGBT+ members need/want a site like this because they want to be safe while traveling and exploring the world. Bigoted fools don't have any real risk going somewhere with LGBT+ rights.
No. But this site is created to help people that don't want to face discrimination being themselves. If one or two bigots don't go to Canada because they don't discriminate enough then I don't think anyone is going to miss a night's sleep.
I've only been to two places that I deemed (at least) kid-unfriendly ... in general, you never know who in the crowd of tourists might be part of the LGBT+ community. And while the federal government (in the US) provides accurate assessments of travel risk in general (you should use the STEP program for any travel abroad - https://step.state.gov/) it doesn't consider laws and the social climate risks for minority populations.
Yes. If you're going somewhere with a higher-than-usual risk to yourself compared to more traditional tourist locations you should definitely register yourself with STEP (or the equivalent for your home country).
I don't see the usefulness of this site being whether you should go to a deeply religious country engulfed in civil war, as is unfortunately the case in some countries. I think this is far more valuable when considering countries that some people might not know too much about. Like if you want to go to Kiev for a week. I've been there and as a straight guy I couldn't tell you if going there as an LGBT+ person would be safe or not. That's where I see the real value.
From my perspective of being an American, the strongest anti-gay countries in the world also seem to be anti-American; purely coincidental, but still a damper on such potential vacation plans.
Great website, really nice UX. Small bug with some of the data -- spot the "undefined"s:
"United States has a LGBT+ travel rank of 53 with a total gay travel score of 57. United States is part of Americas with main city at Washington, D.C.. Its Developed country with a population of 324M people. The main currency is undefined. The languages spoken are English. the United States of America is the formal name of undefined"
I bet you could ask 100 people what the "main city" in the US was and none of them would say D.C.
In general the U.S. seems varied enough that a single score isn't really meaningful... There's a pretty big difference between Seattle and rural Mississippi.
> the Russian Federation is the formal name of undefined
I'm not sure what this is supposed to say, but according to the Russian
constitution, the names “Russia” and “the Russian Federation” are
synonymous.
At first I was surprised at how low the Russian Federation is on the
list, but then I remembered that Chechnya exists. I guess a lot of
these pages should have a note that YMMV, depending on the region and
the city. Moscow shouldn't be that much different from Kiyiv or, say,
Warsaw, while the North Caucasus regions are clearly closer to
fundamentalist societies when it comes to LGBT+ rights.
Africa is a very large continent with countries that range from "have legalized same sex marriage" to "have death penalty for homosexuality", so saying a region is "clearly closer to Africa when it comes to LGBT+ rights" doesn't make a ton of sense..
This map is terribly wrong for some parts of the ex-USSR and Asia.
Coming out as a gay person in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan or Azerbaijan is dangerous. Dangerous as in "there is a high chance you'll be beaten up and a mild chance of being kidnapped and killed".
From the other side, Russia is not that bad. Not bad means "you can see gay people kissing on the streets without repercussions" (in the European part of the country).
Yeah, but none of them is openly gay. For example, they can't practically display a rainbow flag near the entrance. These are "underground" bars and clubs.
Personally I'd like to see more information and transparency about how the ratings are calculated and where the data is coming from for me to put faith in the website and methodology, since that's the whole premise.
For example what does X% discrimination or persecution actually mean? How is that quantified and why is it a percentage?
Edit: another thing that doesn't give me confidence in the website are the frequent spelling errors, this is copy and pasted from the Netherlands description and there is a mistake in almost every sentence.
> Netherlands is part of Europe with main city at Amsterdam. Its Developed country with a population of 17M people. The main currency is Euro. The languages spoken are Dutch. the Kingdom of the Netherlands is the formal name of Netherlands It is adviced to Exercise normal safety precautions
I would argue it doesn't make it easier to understand though, plus I'm sure there is a mistake in your methodology. E.g. several countries you score as 67% in equal age of consent when they have laws specifying this. What is a 100% then? Moreover the guide you posted gives a max rating of 1 in this category, therefore that's why I think you made a mistake mapping their scores to percentages.
Thanks, another user pointed it out and I fixed. Currently, the ranges are -3 to 3 for each category but for some, it's only 0 to -3 and accordingly I changed it.
As a gay man, you're safer and better off in Singapore than you would be in most parts of Europe and the top portion of the list. Yet Singapore is down at 92.
Interpret this however you want, but the list flawed. Laws don't mean shit unless they're enforced and that goes both ways. "Bad" laws not enforced is better than good laws not enforced.
Fucking hell, your defense against all the criticism is that "Oh it's data from some 3rd party!", which is more or less saying "not my fault!".
As another has said, this is less than useless, this is dangerous. And if it's the source that's wrong, then the source is also dangerous, but you're spreading dangerously wrong information. I hope no LGBT+ person actually depends on your site, because it might get them fucking killed.
Besides, having the info be country-wide is not granular enough. A gay traveller would probably feel very safe in San Francisco but not feel very safe in some little town deep in Alabama.
I'm a straight male and I feel uncomfortable in parts of TN, WV, AL, GA. I go there to see family and I don't like it. I feel like some of these folks don't just dislike LGBT, they dislike everyone. Downtown Seattle at 4am in cracktown is safer, then small town WV as an outsider.
that guide has such a bad reputation for a lot of queer people. the rating isn't a bad rough guide, but it is outright dangerous as a resource to people who are especially trans and gender nonconforming, and queer people traveling with their kids.
if you make it clear that that's your source that's fine, but.... it needs to be more clear.
Yes and no. On the one hand a gay tourist is considerably less likely to be on the receiving end of homophobic beatings in Singapore than many liberal European countries, and won't have any issue finding the gay scene. On the other hand its a country where only a fifth of the population think gay sex isn't wrong and the unenforced law against gay sex still has majority public support.
> On the other hand its a country where only a fifth of the population think gay sex isn't wrong and the unenforced law against gay sex still has majority public support.
So? Aren't people entitled to their own views and opinions.
Not sure about the accuracy. France says locals hostile at 33% while Russia only has locals hostile at 17% and locals hostile at 0% in Singapore...Oh and locals hostile at 17% in Saudi Arabia!!!
I'd say those numbers are totally wrong. This is the kind of project where hacking a quick solution together could lead to bad consequences so care should be taken with the numbers you give.
I wonder if this is because of how you convert to percentages? I haven't looked yet at the data in spartacus.
Also it is true that there's a difference between gay tourists who are less likely to be bothered in certain religious countries compared to residents.
Oh, yep I guess it is there. Seems like it could be a little more prominent, since this is basically just their dataset, with some filtering and ads (and a more confusing representation of the score).
Yes, but it wasn't obvious to me. I only spotted it after careful reading AND knowing the data source was Spartacus. Anyone unfamiliar with that outlet probably wouldn't pick up on the connection. Given the HEAVY reliance on their data I agree that more prominence and a link would be nice.
The source data [1] shows Saudi Arabia as -2 on a scale of 0 to -2 for locals hostile. They also note "Some of the most dangerous countries for LGBT travelers in 2019 include again Saudi Arabia, Iran, Somalia and the Chechen Republic in Russia, where homosexuals are widely persecuted and threatened with death." [2] so maybe there's a second source being used or there's a data conversion issue.
But I suspect the real range is 0, -1, -2 and would make more sense inverted. Canada 0%, France 50%, Saudi 100%.
"The strength of the religious influence and general homophobia in society will be assessed with up to -2 points, since the quality of life you can massively restrict homosexual."
That doesn't address their criticism though. Many people here have pointed out these mistakes on your site. Do you not see that it is actively dangerous to present wrong information like this?
No actually, If there are positive developments it will be scored from 1,2 or 3 and if there are negative developments then it will -1,-2 or -3 and if there isn't anything going on regarding that then it will be 0
I don't think this is right for every category though, the only thing in the methodology I could find is this
> The categories have different levels. If a category has three levels, a maximum of three points can be awarded.
Keyword being "if". They don't specify which categories these are. Logically how could you score higher than a 1 in equal age of consent, that's a true or false question right?
I checked 2017, 2018 and Canada held a consistent 1 score. I also found this in the 2017 document:
"With regard to anti-discrimination laws up to 3 points can be awarded, making a distinction, for example, whether the principle of non-discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in the constitution or only in a law for a specific area is shown."
I'm surprised the United States is not red if you're considering the "T" of LGBT+. Specially considering that some states still have the Panic Defense.
Like so many others, these rankings seem to be far more focused on the LGB than the T.
Also, the site tells me that I'll get murdered or sentenced to death if I visit a given country, and then immediately below that displays an ad for flights to that country's capital city. I really don't think your CTR is going to be high on that particular ad placement.
>Italy has a LGBT+ travel rank of 40 with a total gay travel score of 60. Italy is part of Europe with main city at Rome. Its Developed country with a population of 61M people. The main currency is undefined. The languages spoken are Italian. the Republic of Italy is the formal name of undefined
The currency is Euro, pretty much defined.
Republic of Italy is the formal name of Italy.
And the overall rating at first sight seem way off.
Most probably it is brought down by the 0% in "adoption allowed" which I cannot see the relevance of in the case of a travel.
Does this account for how regional variation within each country? Because even in the UK, peoples attitudes can vary wildly from one town and city to another.
Israel is probably one of the few countries other than the USA were LGBTQ+ people were attacked and killed in public or in private spaces.
An ashkenazi religious Jew stabbed and killed a girl in a gay pride event in Jerusalem, and the government coalition is made up of some of the most externally homophobic (also Ashkenazi) MPs.
Israel has an image of tolerance because of TLV, which was mostly a tourism driven policy or gimmick. The rest of the country is really not gay friendly at all and personal safety is something to consider if you travel outside of TLV.
Mind you the murder of youth in a gay community club took place in TLV.
The stubbing happened in public during a pride event in Jerusalem. Daylight.
The shooting in the youth club was of a guy who burst in and gunned them down.
Israel does not allow same sex marriage and having your right recognized l, if you got married outside is constantly challenged, as well as adoption by LGBTQ+ parents.
Openly homophobic MPs are almost as common as islamophobic or xenophobic (asylum seekers) ones, and no one was fired for any of the vile public statements made.
Israel’s image as a tolerant country is not reflected in its reality, as much as its claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East. It’s neither.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 181 ms ] threadI would love to get feedback and improve the travel experience for LGBT+ community.
I'm also pretty sceptical of the underlying data anyway: I'm also perplexed by the idea that the UK has a significant negative religious influence, and I'm pretty sure Pride is banned in Saudi Arabia
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-51233003
We also have Catholic churches here, who've made similar pronouncements about relationships of gay people.
We've had a long running demonstration outside primary schools by Muslim people complaining about age appropriate lessons about relationships.
A transwoman was ostracized by her orthodox Jewish community to the point where she was unable to see her children. Despite winning the various court cases she's now given up trying to have contact with her children.
Religious intolerance of LGBTQ relationships is widespread in the UK across most religions.
'But I have to worry about the power of bishops in the House of Lords', said no tourist ever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Northern_Irelan...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Unionist_Party#Soci...
EDIT: Also, it's weird to discount the fact that about one third of all schools in England are faith schools - most of those are either Church of England or Catholic. Ofsted requires schools to teach about same sex relationships, but Ofsted doesn't prevent schools from teaching that these relationships are sinful. https://www.secularism.org.uk/opinion/2019/07/faith-schools-...
Wait, what? Do you have a source for this? Because if it is true it is outrageous.
LGBT+ members need/want a site like this because they want to be safe while traveling and exploring the world. Bigoted fools don't have any real risk going somewhere with LGBT+ rights.
I don't see the usefulness of this site being whether you should go to a deeply religious country engulfed in civil war, as is unfortunately the case in some countries. I think this is far more valuable when considering countries that some people might not know too much about. Like if you want to go to Kiev for a week. I've been there and as a straight guy I couldn't tell you if going there as an LGBT+ person would be safe or not. That's where I see the real value.
"United States has a LGBT+ travel rank of 53 with a total gay travel score of 57. United States is part of Americas with main city at Washington, D.C.. Its Developed country with a population of 324M people. The main currency is undefined. The languages spoken are English. the United States of America is the formal name of undefined"
In general the U.S. seems varied enough that a single score isn't really meaningful... There's a pretty big difference between Seattle and rural Mississippi.
Where do the numbers come from?
> The main currency is undefined.
It's the Russian Rouble (RUB).
> the Russian Federation is the formal name of undefined
I'm not sure what this is supposed to say, but according to the Russian constitution, the names “Russia” and “the Russian Federation” are synonymous.
At first I was surprised at how low the Russian Federation is on the list, but then I remembered that Chechnya exists. I guess a lot of these pages should have a note that YMMV, depending on the region and the city. Moscow shouldn't be that much different from Kiyiv or, say, Warsaw, while the North Caucasus regions are clearly closer to fundamentalist societies when it comes to LGBT+ rights.
But everyone that I clicked on had a lot of undefined data.
Coming out as a gay person in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan or Azerbaijan is dangerous. Dangerous as in "there is a high chance you'll be beaten up and a mild chance of being kidnapped and killed".
From the other side, Russia is not that bad. Not bad means "you can see gay people kissing on the streets without repercussions" (in the European part of the country).
Syria? Oman? Just no comments.
I never say gay people kissing (or even holding hands) even in Moscow.
Maybe Russia is not as bad as Syria, but that statement is not true.
For example what does X% discrimination or persecution actually mean? How is that quantified and why is it a percentage?
Edit: another thing that doesn't give me confidence in the website are the frequent spelling errors, this is copy and pasted from the Netherlands description and there is a mistake in almost every sentence.
> Netherlands is part of Europe with main city at Amsterdam. Its Developed country with a population of 17M people. The main currency is Euro. The languages spoken are Dutch. the Kingdom of the Netherlands is the formal name of Netherlands It is adviced to Exercise normal safety precautions
Interpret this however you want, but the list flawed. Laws don't mean shit unless they're enforced and that goes both ways. "Bad" laws not enforced is better than good laws not enforced.
https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay-travel-...
As another has said, this is less than useless, this is dangerous. And if it's the source that's wrong, then the source is also dangerous, but you're spreading dangerously wrong information. I hope no LGBT+ person actually depends on your site, because it might get them fucking killed.
Besides, having the info be country-wide is not granular enough. A gay traveller would probably feel very safe in San Francisco but not feel very safe in some little town deep in Alabama.
Edited for spelling
if you make it clear that that's your source that's fine, but.... it needs to be more clear.
So? Aren't people entitled to their own views and opinions.
I'd say those numbers are totally wrong. This is the kind of project where hacking a quick solution together could lead to bad consequences so care should be taken with the numbers you give.
I wonder if this is because of how you convert to percentages? I haven't looked yet at the data in spartacus.
Also it is true that there's a difference between gay tourists who are less likely to be bothered in certain religious countries compared to residents.
"This ranking is based on 14 different paramters like civil rights, discrimation and persecution by Spartacus LGBT+ Travel."
Yes, but it wasn't obvious to me. I only spotted it after careful reading AND knowing the data source was Spartacus. Anyone unfamiliar with that outlet probably wouldn't pick up on the connection. Given the HEAVY reliance on their data I agree that more prominence and a link would be nice.
Shouldn’t have Saudi listed as anything other than “Do not travel” or you are giving people dangerously bad info!
[1] https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/gaytravelindex-2019.pdf
[2] https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/gay-travel-index-2019...
In the source data, Saudi Arabia is scored as a -2 for locals hostile and France only -1. The percentage is 17% and 33%, respectively. Why is this?
The conversion to percentages doesn't make any sense.
"The strength of the religious influence and general homophobia in society will be assessed with up to -2 points, since the quality of life you can massively restrict homosexual."
https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/gaytravelindex_2017.pdf
OP, if you're not going to take the quality of information very seriously, you should probably pivot to something a bit less hazardous.
What does this mean? Spartacus has a 1 or 0 (true/false?) in this column.
> The categories have different levels. If a category has three levels, a maximum of three points can be awarded.
Keyword being "if". They don't specify which categories these are. Logically how could you score higher than a 1 in equal age of consent, that's a true or false question right?
"With regard to anti-discrimination laws up to 3 points can be awarded, making a distinction, for example, whether the principle of non-discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in the constitution or only in a law for a specific area is shown."
https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/gaytravelindex_2017.pdf
Also in 2019 Kenya managed a -1 score. Presumably they had equality and repealed it.
*parameters
Also, the site tells me that I'll get murdered or sentenced to death if I visit a given country, and then immediately below that displays an ad for flights to that country's capital city. I really don't think your CTR is going to be high on that particular ad placement.
>Italy has a LGBT+ travel rank of 40 with a total gay travel score of 60. Italy is part of Europe with main city at Rome. Its Developed country with a population of 61M people. The main currency is undefined. The languages spoken are Italian. the Republic of Italy is the formal name of undefined
The currency is Euro, pretty much defined.
Republic of Italy is the formal name of Italy.
And the overall rating at first sight seem way off.
Most probably it is brought down by the 0% in "adoption allowed" which I cannot see the relevance of in the case of a travel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Taiwan
Does this account for how regional variation within each country? Because even in the UK, peoples attitudes can vary wildly from one town and city to another.
Latest Chrome mobile on Android 10.
An ashkenazi religious Jew stabbed and killed a girl in a gay pride event in Jerusalem, and the government coalition is made up of some of the most externally homophobic (also Ashkenazi) MPs.
Israel has an image of tolerance because of TLV, which was mostly a tourism driven policy or gimmick. The rest of the country is really not gay friendly at all and personal safety is something to consider if you travel outside of TLV.
Mind you the murder of youth in a gay community club took place in TLV.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_acts_of_violence_a...
The shooting in the youth club was of a guy who burst in and gunned them down.
Israel does not allow same sex marriage and having your right recognized l, if you got married outside is constantly challenged, as well as adoption by LGBTQ+ parents.
Openly homophobic MPs are almost as common as islamophobic or xenophobic (asylum seekers) ones, and no one was fired for any of the vile public statements made.
Israel’s image as a tolerant country is not reflected in its reality, as much as its claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East. It’s neither.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yishai_Schlissel
Singapore is a first world country.
[1] https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-sup...