Ohio activists are arming themselves with new data in the battle to repeal antiquated laws across the country that criminalize people with HIV.
Two reports, one released by Equality Ohio with the Ohio Health Modernization Movement, and another from The Williams Institute at UCLA, look at the criminalization of HIV in the Buckeye State. They discovered that over half of prosecutions for so-called “HIV crimes” were for acts statistically unlikely to transmit HIV.
Ohio has six laws on the books that either criminalize certain acts by people living with HIV or substantially increase sentences for them compared to other people in the criminal justice system who do not carry the virus.
Those acts include sex with other adults regardless of the HIV-positive person’s therapy or viral count, and “harassment” by bodily fluids, such as spitting, or throwing urine, feces or blood at someone. Only exposure to blood would result in HIV infection.
Most of Ohio’s HIV laws were written at the height of AIDS panic in the 1980s and early ’90s, before research and experience clarified the limits of HIV infection and effective therapies made living with HIV a reality.
HIV laws remain on the books in 34 states.
The studies also found a disproportionate number of people charged with HIV-related crimes were Black, compared to Ohio’s total population.
“Ohio is unique in that these antiquated laws are actually being utilized and enforced against everyday Ohioans who are living with HIV,” Kate Mozynski, an attorney with Equality Ohio and one of the co-authors of the organization’s report told the Buckeye Flame.
In 2022, about 25,000 people in Ohio were living with HIV, while new diagnoses ticked down from 985 in 2018 to 866. Forty-seven percent of new diagnoses were among Black people, making their infection rate nearly seven times higher than the white population’s.
More than half of new diagnoses were among people aged 20 to 34. Men having sex with men accounted for fifty-six percent of the transmission rate.
Ohio is also one of six states that require anyone convicted of “HIV crimes” to register as a sex offender. Louisiana, South Dakota, Tennessee, Arkansas and Washington State round out that list.
The Williams Institute looked at arrests under Ohio’s six laws over two decades, as well as felony prosecutions from 2009 to 2022 in Cuyahoga County, the state’s most populous county, which is home to Cleveland.
They discovered nearly half of the cases were for HIV-positive individuals who had consensual sex without disclosing their status to their partner, regardless of their viral load and whether or not the other individual contracted the virus that causes AIDS.
As activists fight for repeal at the state level, the Biden administration is deploying the Justice Department to address discriminatory HIV laws.
In December, the DOJ notified Tennessee it was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act for enforcing a state law that increases penalties for people convicted of prostitution if they’re also HIV-positive. Federal charges were filed against the state in February.
The bodies of a gay couple were discovered yesterday after a weeklong search following a police officer’s arrest for their murder.
New South Wales cop and aspiring social media influencer Beau Lamarre-Condon, 28, was charged with killing Jesse Baird, 26 – a former TV presenter whom Lamarre-Condon had casually dated until recently – and Baird’s boyfriend, Luke Davies, 29, a Qantas flight attendant.
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The victims’ bodies were found Tuesday stuffed inside surfboard bags and buried in a bush grave.
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Now leadership at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade have disinvited NSW Police from marching at the signature Mardi Gras event on Saturday.
“Having the NSW Police march this year could add to the distress within our communities, already deeply affected by recent events.”
Parade officials added, “This decision was not made lightly.”
Lamarre-Condon was arrested Friday after he turned himself in at Bondi police station, following a widely publicized search to locate the missing couple.
The NSW senior constable did not apply for bail and remains in protective custody.
Police say Lamarre-Condon shot and killed Baird and Davies at Baird’s home the previous Monday.
On Wednesday, following the discovery of blood-soaked clothing belonging to the victims in a Sydney suburb dumpster, investigators discovered “a large amount of blood” at Baird’s home, according to detective superintendent Daniel Doherty, who spoke to a packed news conference on Friday.
Police also found a single bullet that was a ballistic match for Lamarre-Condon’s own police-issued firearm.
Authorities asked for help from the public tracking a white van that they believe Lamarre-Condon used to transport and dispose of Baird and Davies’ bodies.
Still, the couple’s whereabouts remained unknown.
Then on Tuesday, police discovered the two men’s bodies, which they say Lamarre-Condon stuffed in surf bags and buried sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday morning in a remote area in the Southern Tablelands southwest of Sydney, close to a fence line and partially hidden by rocks and debris.
In addition to his day job as a Sydney cop, Lamarre-Condon’s social media revealed he was a celebrity-obsessed wannabe influencer who managed to project an online image of wealth and privilege despite his modest policeman’s salary.
Photos on his Instagram account, which has since been shut down, show Lamarre-Condon sipping champagne on private jets and posing in exotic tropical destinations, as well as on Mediterranean beaches dressed in designer-label outfits.
He also boasted selfies with multiple celebrities, including Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Lady Gaga and New Zealand singer Lorde. According to the Daily Mail, earlier this month Lamarre-Condon successfully snapped a pic with Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker.
Since he moved from Atlanta in 2012, Detroit native Kevin Heard has been devoted to one ambitious goal: creating opportunity for LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs to succeed in the challenging business environment of Motor City.
“I didn’t see or was aware of a professional LGBTQ community. I wanted to cultivate that,” Heard told The Detroit News. “I saw a need for organizations that have a fiscal responsibility, voice for and advocate for LGBT-owned businesses. I also felt as though it’s really important to possibly and intentionally curate an LGBT business district within the city of Detroit, like all major metropolitan areas across the nation have.”
She faces off against Trump’s hand-picked election-denier, MAGA Republican Matthew DePerno.
So Heard founded the Detroit LGBT Regional Chamber of Commerce, which has distributed thousands of dollars to up-and-coming small businesses and entrepreneurs to pay for leases, buy equipment, and scale their dreams. Recent contracts for members include a Ford Motor Co. agreement and a pending contract with the NFL Draft when it comes to Detroit in April.
One chamber member is coffee house Eastside Roasterz, a passion project from Tiffany and Riss Dezort, who moved from Washington, D.C., where the LGBTQ+ population is three times higher than in Detroit.
It was a culture shock.
“When it comes to building a business with all of that in mind, that’s really what we went to Kevin for. ‘Hey, would you have a better understanding of queerness and business crossover and how to navigate that here in Michigan?” Riss Dezort said.
The Dezorts have earned over $35,000 in business grants from Michigan organizations, but the biggest boost came from the LGBT Chamber, which provided a 12-week accelerator program and mentorship in navigating the business environment in Detroit.
Members of the LGBT Chamber include Corktown Health, La Feria + Cata Vino, Welcome Home Yoga and Wellness, and the Dezort’s Eastside Roasterz, which supplies coffee for BasBlue, Sister Pie, and Next Chapter Books. The coffee spot also offers wholesale coffee purchases online and operates pop-up shops.
Heard offered, “I’m looking at this as an opportunity to bring more great, innovative young people who would like to stay and live in the state of Michigan. To be inclusive of that, to know that this is a space that people can start their families regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity expression.”
“Discrimination is bad for business… we know this to be true,” out Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said recently at a town hall for the LGBT Chamber. “This is not wishful thinking… the more inclusive we are, the more we do to reach out to all communities, the better it is for business in our state.”
People want to live in a place “that will treat them equally and fairly, where they know that they won’t be discriminated against in all different areas of their life,” Nessel said.
But obstacles remain, Heard says.
“The barriers in which LGBT people get when it comes to businesses are the gatekeepers at traditional banks that are maybe homophobic, may have their unconscious biases in when looking at or actually meeting the candidate. They look great on paper, but they don’t like their lifestyle, and that has been honestly one of the biggest barriers.”
Part of the Chamber’s mission, Heard said, is showing LGBTQ+ people in spaces “other than just the typical bar-hopping, Pride parades.”
“We are in every industry, every level of an organization,” Heard said, “and we own more than bakery shops and bars.”
After months of torture in the basement of a Grozny police station, a gay Chechen man has finally fled the grip of Russia and his native country’s rabid homophobia, the North Caucasus LGBTQ+ rights group SK SOS reported Wednesday.
Rizvan Dadayev was detained by police in the summer of 2022 after he was outed by a group of local extortionists in the Chechen capital in a video distributed online, SK SOS told The Moscow Times. He hadn’t been heard from since.
The organization said Dadayev had been abused at the hands of law enforcement officials with direct ties to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has long held that “no gays” live in Chechnya. Kadyrov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is the subject of multiple U.S. sanctions for reported human rights abuses.
“Dadayev, who was detained only because of his sexual orientation, was also beaten and tortured,” SK SOS said. He was held in the police station basement from late July to mid-November 2022.
Dadayev identified the local police chief, who had a direct hand in his abuse, as the nephew of Kadyrov’s wife, Deni Aydamirov, who was appointed Chechnya’s Deputy Interior Minister in November.
It’s unclear why Dadayev was finally released from police custody after eight months in detention. While his family credits Kadyrov for intervening personally, Dadayev maintains police wanted to avoid antagonizing LGBTQ+ activists, both unlikely scenarios in a country with zero tolerance for queer people.
From his release in November 2022 up until this month, Dadayev was living “in Europe,” he told SK SOS in January, referring to elsewhere in Russia.
Russia and Chechnya – a republic in the Russian Federation – have been closely allied in their harassment of LGBTQ+ citizens from the one-time breakaway republic. In February last year, a 28-year-old gay Chechen refugee was arrested in Moscow as he tried to return to the Netherlands. He was traveling home after attending his father’s funeral.
In 2021, two young gay men who escaped from Chechnya after being tortured were caught by Russian police and returned to Chechen custody, the Russia LGBT Network reported. The pair were forced to make apology videos, among other humiliations.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Vladimir Putin has ratcheted up the country’s official intolerance of the LGBTQ+ community.
Acting on a request from Putin’s Ministry of Justice in November, Russia’s Supreme Court declared the international gay rights movement an “extremist organization,” paving the way for increased persecution of LGBTQ+ activists throughout Russia and abroad.
The order — which identifies an amorphous “international LGBT social movement” as an extremist threat to the country — took five hours to decide and was made in secret with no opposing arguments.
In February 2022, Moscow shut down Novaya Gazeta, the last major independent Russian newspaper, after it was accused of violating Russia’s new wartime censorship law. The outlet had reported on Chechnya’s notorious gay detention sites in 2017.
A transgender man’s murder in August has become a teaching opportunity in progressive Wayne County, Michigan, as mourning friends and family members were forced to defend his gender identity after death.
The senseless killing of 26-year-old Jean Butchart, shot in the head by a stranger on a hot August evening in Belleville, shocked his loved ones. But a cascade of misinformation based on conflicting reports about his gender worsened their heartbreak.
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As police searched for Butchart’s killer, conflicting information on the victim’s driver’s license led police and the media to misgender him as a woman.
“It was an honest mistake,” Julisa Abad, a trans woman who serves as director of transgender outreach for the advocacy group Fair Michigan, told news outlet MLive.
On the day of his murder, Butchart had started a new job doing landscape maintenance at a mobile home park. First responders found him motionless on the ground with no pulse and a gunshot wound to the head. He was declared dead at the scene.
While Butchart’s driver’s license identified him as male, his name had yet to be changed on the document. As such, his license reflected his deadname. Though Michigan has made changing sex on identity documents relatively easy and affordable, a name change is more complicated, time-consuming, and, for some, prohibitively expensive.
Witnesses at the crime scene identified Butchart as Jean, using the French pronunciation common in the Great Lakes region close to Quebec, so police were aware of the victim’s male gender identity.
“They called him Jean,” Van Buren Township Police Chief Jason Wright said. “That’s how we knew.”
Over the next few days, as the crime was reported internally and to the public, conflicting information on his driver’s license became a source of grief.
First, the Van Buren Township Police Department posted a news release about Butchart’s death in association with the capture of Matthew Torrey Tiggs Jr., 22, who was charged with Butchart’s killing as well as an attempted murder and assault in two other incidents over 10 days in August.
That release identified the victim as “26-year-old Jean Butchart” with no gender indication.
Then, when the prosecutor’s office issued a news release, the release identified Butchart by their deadname with “Jean” added in quotes, as is customary with nicknames.
“Because the names were female names with no explanation of the gender identity of the victim, it was wrongly assumed that the entry ‘male’ [for Butchart] was a mistake,” explained Maria Miller, the prosecutor’s office director of communications.
That misinformation was amplified in news reports and on social media, leading to frustration and anger among Butchart’s friends and family, who overwhelmed officials with an email campaign demanding a correction and a formal apology.
“We apologize to his family, friends, and to the transgender community,” Miller said in an email. “We immediately corrected this error after we confirmed Mr. Butchart’s gender identity. There was never any intent to misgender Mr. Butchart.”
While the mistake was traumatic for Butchart’s friends and family, Miller called the case “helpful” in spurring cultural competence training for officials in Wayne County.
Now, 18 area police departments have attended a special training session, with more planned for other Wayne County police departments and the sheriff’s office.
“We have to realize that not everything is coming from a place of malice,” said Fair Michigan’s Julisa Abad. “We’re all still learning all the alphabets of the LGBTQ+ umbrella – I don’t even know all of it.”
Three LGBTQ+ advocacy groups in western North Carolina have fired an opening salvo in their effort to overturn the state’s discriminatory Don’t Say Gay law.
The Campaign for Southern Equality, Youth OUTright WNC, and PFLAG Asheville have joined forces to challenge the Buncombe County School District (near Asheville) over SB49, enacted in August after North Carolina Republicans overrode a veto by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.
The Don’t Say Gay legislation, also known as the Parent’s Bill of Rights, bans instruction on “gender identity, sexual activity, or sexuality” in kindergarten through fourth grade and requires parents to be notified “prior to any changes in the name or pronoun used for a student in school records or by school personnel,” with some discretion accorded to school administrators.
The law went into effect immediately with its passage, and in the months since, school districts across the state have been grappling with how to implement it.
In a complaint addressed to the Title IX Coordinator for Buncombe County Schools, the three groups allege SB49 violates the education provisions of Title IX.
“The policies passed by the Buncombe County Board of Education to comply with the state law SB49 (alternately called the ‘Don’t Say LGBTQ’ law and the ‘Parents’ Bill of Rights’) create a hostile educational environment for LGBTQIA+ students, families, staff and faculty,” the complainants write, “and in doing so violate Title IX and Buncombe County Schools’ obligation to provide every student with a safe and non-discriminatory school environment.”
The complaint cites Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funding, which includes discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
In October, the Campaign for Southern Equality addressed their allegations over Title IX to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, which responded, “Absent a determination by USED Office of Civil Rights or a court order affirming your position, neither the State Board nor DPI can knowingly fail to comply with a duly enacted state law.”
The groups’ strategy then moved to obtain just such a determination from a local official entrusted with enforcing Title IX. In Buncombe County, that responsibility falls to Shanon Martin, Title IX Coordinator for Buncombe County Schools.
“We request that, should these allegations of a Title IX violation be confirmed, the Buncombe County Schools Title IX Coordinator instruct the Superintendent to delay all implementation of the SB49-related policies passed on December 7, 2023, until such time as the federal complaint against DPI and SBE has been resolved,” the complaint to Martin reads.
Craig White, supportive schools director at Campaign For Southern Equality, told Blue Ridge Public Radio that his team expects to file a federal complaint in January.
Rob Elliot, chairman of the policy committee for the Buncombe County Board of Education, said figuring out how to enforce SB49 has been “very stressful” and a “noisy, big, complex legal discussion.”
“We don’t exist just under the confines of this one new law, Elliot said. “This doesn’t define our entire world. We exist under a whole universe of federal law and state law, all of which we have to abide by as well.”
At the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), a noxious combination of political ambition, billionaire privilege, and bureaucratic cowardice led the academic hospital to cut off gender-affirming care to minor patients, including patients younger than what the institution’s right-wing detractors had demanded.
In September 2022, opponents of gender-affirming care in South Carolina latched onto a parenthetical included in a medical student’s graduate research at MUSC. The parenthetical comment described the youngest transgender patient to visit the hospital’s pediatric endocrinology clinic, just 4 years old, according to a report from ProPublica.
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That fact morphed into fiction as far-right critics inaccurately claimed that children that young were prescribed hormones as part of gender transition therapy at the hospital.
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None other than gender-critical transphobe and X owner Elon Musk amplified the false claim, posting, “Is it really true that four-year-olds are receiving hormone treatment?” His post led federal and state lawmakers to interrogate hospital leaders about whether the public hospital was, in fact, helping young children medically transition.
The truth was that the hospital didn’t offer surgery to minors as part of their gender-affirming care offerings, nor did any patients receive hormone therapy before puberty.
The facts, however, didn’t matter.
“If MUSC is mutilating or castrating children, I won’t stop until they are stripped of public funding,” Republican state Rep. Thomas Beach of South Carolina’s Freedom Caucus, threatened in an X post.
The South Carolina legislature had already banned the state’s flagship medical university from using public money to provide any treatment “furthering the gender transition” of children under 16, and hospital leaders assured lawmakers they didn’t use state money to care for trans patients.
But over the next several months, hospital administrators went even further in an effort to evade scrutiny from lawmakers, the press, and the far-right outrage machine. MUSC cut off all gender-affirming care for anyone under 18, while abandoning all previous patients with no explanation or advice for their continued care.
That autumn — as pressure mounted on the hospital from state lawmakers and those anxious to exploit the culturally divisive issue for political gain — U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) was locked in a contentious race against her Democratic opponent Annie Andrews, a pediatrician at MUSC who wasn’t connected to the endocrinology clinic. Mace exploited the connection, and placed trans kids at the center of the controversy.
In a tabloid-style video from Mace, text scrolled over a photo of Andrews: “Sex change surgery, puberty blockers, gender changing hormones for children?! That’s not protection. That’s child abuse.”
Hospital administrators dissuaded pediatric residents who wanted to publish a letter defending Andrews against Mace’s political attacks, for fear it would invite more scrutiny.
“They left me out on a limb,” said Andrews, who has since resigned from the hospital.
The state’s far-right Freedom Caucus also reveled in their charge to strip MUSC of funding because of the hospital’s perceived pro-LGBTQ+ bias.
After MUSC leaders agreed in December to cut off access to hormones for gender transition for minors of all ages — including 16- and 17-year-olds — state Rep. Beach crowed on Facebook, “I went after the Medical Center of South Carolina with 19 other of my door-kicking, rock-ribbed, and South Carolina’s most Conservative legislator friends. It feels good to be a gangster.”
In Jordan, one of the few countries in the Middle East where same-sex relations do not incur a criminal penalty, the government has initiated a crackdown on LGBTQ+ activists in a coordinated campaign of intimidation.
According to a report released by Human Rights Watch on Tuesday, interviews with 13 prominent LGBTQ+ activists in the country reveal tactics of intimidation and abuse forcing activists to cease their advocacy work or flee the country altogether.
Russia’s Supreme Court declared all LGBTQ+ supporters as “extremists.” Now a Russian company is tracking queer-friendly businesses.
In the past, Jordan has promoted itself as a modernizing influence among Middle Eastern nations compared with its neighbors. The country’s sodomy laws, dating back to British rule, were repealed in 1951.
“Jordanian authorities have launched a coordinated attack against LGBT rights activists, aimed at eradicating any discussion around gender and sexuality from the public and private spheres,” said Rasha Younes, senior LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Security forces’ intimidation tactics and unlawful interference in LGBT organizing have driven activism further underground and forced civil society leaders into an impossible reality: severe self-censorship or fleeing Jordan.”
The report details how Jordan’s General Intelligence Department (GID) and the Preventive Security Department of the Public Security Directorate have interrogated LGBTQ+ activists about their work, intimidated them with threats of violence, arrest, and prosecution, and forced activists to shut down their organizations.
Some activists have been kidnapped without legal cause and interrogated overnight.
Other tactics have included smearing activists online based on their sexual orientation and deploying other social media users to out activists online and incite violence against them.
In addition to interviewing 13 LGBTQ+ rights activists and others associated with the Jordanian LGBTQ+ community, HRW reviewed statements by government officials, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals, as well as visual media provided by activists documenting incidents of online harassment against them in public social media posts.
One victim, the director of an unnamed LGBTQ+ center, says he was forced into a car by authorities and interrogated overnight. GID agents called his parents and outed him, he said. Others detailed the forced cancellation of events in Amman, the Jordanian capital, and multiple instances of online harassment.
All of the activists targeted described the intimidation as a serial effort, with each of them summoned for interrogation multiple times. Three of the activists described interrogations by the governor of Amman, who interviewed them after they preemptively canceled the screening of a film depicting gay men.
Two organizations’ directors said they were forced to shut down their offices and flee the country following official intimidation.
“We arrived in a foreign country without any plan or support,” said one organization leader who fled with his boyfriend. “We had no choice. Since I fled Jordan, I consistently wake up screaming in terror. It has been the hardest experience I have ever been through.”
One LGBTQ+ activist who has remained in Jordan described her current reality: “Merely existing in Amman has become terrifying.”
As Republican-led legislatures have limited or banned access to gender-affirming care for trans people across the country, states like New Mexico are witnessing a large influx of “gender refugees” seeking healthcare.
Over the past two-plus years, nearly two dozen states have instituted limits or bans on gender-affirming health care for trans youth and adults. While trans people in red states seek out alternative sources of care and places to live, larger states and metropolitan areas like San Francisco and New York can prove prohibitively expensive.
So smaller states like New Mexico, Minnesota, Colorado, Vermont, and Washington, with prohibitions on restricting gender-affirming health care and a lower cost of living, are attracting a crush of trans patients seeking care.
They’re being met with waiting lists.
“I feel really excited and proud to be here in New Mexico, where it’s such a strong stance and such a strong refuge state,” Molly McClain, a family medicine physician and medical director of the Deseo clinic, which serves transgender youth at the University of New Mexico Hospital, told CBS News. “And I also don’t think that that translates to having a lot more care available.”
The strain is affecting new patients and longtime New Mexico residents, as well.
“With the influx of gender refugees, wait times have increased to the point that my doctor and I have planned on bi-yearly exams,” said Felix Wallace, a 30-year-old trans man and longtime resident.
Anne Withrow, a 73-year-old trans woman and Albuquerque resident for over 50 years, sought care from a new provider at the University of New Mexico after her doctor retired.
“They said, ‘We have a waiting list.’ A year later they still had a waiting list.”
A year after that, Withrow managed to get care from a local community-based health center.
As of October, UNM’s Truman Health Services clinic still wasn’t taking new patients.
At the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico, T. Michael Trimm says the center used to field two or three calls a month from people out-of-state considering a move.
“It has steadily increased to a pace of one or two a week,” he said.
“We’ve had folks from as far away as Florida and Kentucky and West Virginia,” as well as families in Texas “looking to commute here for care, which is a whole other can of worms, trying to access care that’s legal here, but illegal where they live.”
In New Mexico, the problem is compounded by a physician shortage.
A 2022 report revealed New Mexico lost a staggering 30% of its physicians in the previous four years. The state is on track to have the second-largest physician shortage in the country by 2030, with the oldest physician workforce.
Despite the obstacles, Trimm says “trans folks can be very resilient.”
While a waitlist isn’t ideal, he says it’s easier to endure “than the idea that you maybe could never get the care.”
In 2008, Dan Leveille, 35, was studying computer science at the Rochester Institute of Technology when California voters passed Proposition 8, eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry in the state. It was a sucker punch to the queer community, including Leveille, who found himself wanting to bring order to how he thought about LGBTQ+ rights in the US.
His solution was Equaldex, a passion project that visualizes the state of queer rights not only at home but around the world. The site has become a trusted resource for governments, the media, and LGBTQ+ travelers everywhere.
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LGBTQ Nation spoke with Leveille about Equaldex from his home in Los Angeles.
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LGBTQ Nation: What inspired you to come up with an LGBTQ+ rights visualization tool?
Dan Leveille: When the Prop 8 stuff happened, I got pretty interested in it. And then there were a lot of states that were legalizing same-sex marriage, and a lot of laws were changing. And I remember at some point I was like, “Wait, did that state legalize it? When did that happen?” And I’m like, “Wow, I wish there was like some sort of site that showed all of these changes, like, a map.”
I launched it in 2014.
LGBTQ Nation: How did you envision it being used by others as you were building it?
DL: I first imagined it for my own use just tracking all the changes. But the number of countries that criminalize being gay, the number of countries that, you know, jailed people or even have the death penalty, that stuff is really compelling. And maybe the LGBTQ activists know this, but the general public might not. And I think bringing to light those facts is very important. This could kind of put pressure and visibility on the parts of the world that aren’t progressing.
LGBTQ Nation: What are some of the unexpected ways that Equaldex has been used since you put it up?
DL: One thing that is very obvious, probably, but just didn’t occur to me is how it’s used as a travel guide. That wasn’t immediately obvious to me, but it makes perfect sense. There’s been a lot of interest from travel agencies so that travelers will know, “Oh, this country you’re visiting, these laws, you might want to be careful or reconsider.”
General Electric, they use Equaldex data for some of their internal systems for traveling for employees. It makes sense because companies want to be careful about where they’re sending their employees, especially if there are laws against being gay.
LGBTQ Nation: Does General Electric throw you some bucks for using Equaldex?
DL: No, it’s generally not really a big deal to me. If a company wants to apply this data, I don’t have any issue with it. I like keeping the service free, just in principle.
LGBTQ Nation: GE could make a donation for your trouble.
DL: Yeah, for sure.
LGBTQ Nation: What’s the most LGBTQ+-friendly country on the planet?
DL: Currently I have this system on the site called the Equality Index, which ranks legal rights and public opinion. It’s a newer metric that I added. The countries with the highest ranking right now are Iceland, as number one, and Denmark and Norway. Malta, the Netherlands and Canada are up there.
LGBTQ Nation: And what’s the country you identify as the most hostile to LGBTQ+ identity?
DL: If you’re looking at the Equality Index, the Middle East and Africa are generally the worst in terms of both the laws and the public opinion there.
Dan Levielle The LGBT Equality Index on Equaldex
LGBTQ Nation: You’re looking at the data pretty much every day. What are some of the trends that you can point out?
DL: That’s a good question. Outside of the Middle East and Africa, there’s definitely a lot of progress being made overall. I focus a lot on the US, and polling has shown overwhelmingly that, you know, things are moving positively in terms of the public opinion. Even Republicans and religious groups, they’re moving to being more open.
LGBTQ Nation: In the US, do you see the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in red states as an anomaly, or is there anything in the data that indicates maybe those right-wing Republicans are on to something?
DL: Some of the US polls have shown that while it is becoming more accepted, it also is starting to polarize the more people are being exposed to it. So they have a lot of opinions on it. You know, you see things like drag queen bans and all those book bans and stuff, so people might form an opinion, whereas before, maybe they didn’t have an opinion. It’s interesting. We’re seeing a lot of progress in the US, but there are definitely some laws that are going backward. Hopefully it doesn’t continue that way.
LGBTQ Nation: The site would be a big undertaking for anyone, let alone somebody who’s just doing it as a passion project. Did you ever think, “I’m way over my head on this?”
DL: Yeah, definitely. Especially with big publications and even some governments and organizations that reference Equaldex. So when I see, like, the UN referencing it in one of their reports, I’m like, God, it’s a lot of pressure. Fortunately, I built Equaldex in a way where I don’t need to change everything myself, with such a big community of users who are contributing.
LGBTQ Nation: Tell us about those volunteers.
DL: When I first started Equaldex, there were a lot of people who were very interested in the project, and I got a handful of people who were just super passionate about it. They were super crucial in the first six months to a year of the site. Like, we had all these countries with no data, and people were just going in, adding all the laws. We’ve added a Discord community, as well, that has been really great at attracting editors and moderators.
LGBTQ Nation: Who pays for all of this?
DL: I pay for it myself. It’s not super expensive to run. And I share the cost with a pretty successful gaming app I run called Dododex, which is a companion app for the game ARK. And that helps to pay for software and Chat GPT to help program and stuff.
LGBTQ Nation: What’s the participation rate in some of those red countries for people who help out with the site?
DL: It’s very low. It’s challenging, especially when there are language barriers, too. But in really red countries, those users probably don’t want to publicly join a service like Equaldex, for reasons you can imagine. Fortunately, there are a lot of international organizations, research organizations who dig into the laws and maybe expose some of the things that are happening there, and we do have a handful of contributors who are from countries more familiar with those places.
LGBTQ Nation: Who are some of your go-to’s for the information you’re putting up?
DL: When we’re sourcing laws we try to get to the actual government site that shows what the law is. Unfortunately, sometimes what the government is saying is different than what they’re actually doing. We reference some big LGBT organizations like ILGA. The UN has some great resources exposing things in these homophobic countries. And of course, you know, reputable sources, the BBC, CNN, sites like yours who are reporting.
In terms of like, public opinion, there are a lot of really great organizations like Gallup that are always our go-to’s in terms of public opinion data.
LGBTQ Nation: What’s new on the site?
DL: I am working on a new feature that will — I hate to call it, like, a Yelp for LGBTQ rights, but it’s kind of that same idea where you’ll be able to share your opinion of the state or the province or the country that you lived in and share how comfortable you were about being open in public. What are politicians like? Are there out celebrities? Things like that. If you’ve lived there you have more experience, and it helps people who are traveling, so they can be like, “Okay, definitely don’t hold hands with my partner in public.” And even like, hotel reservations. In some countries you shouldn’t reserve a single bed with your partner in the same room. Stuff like that is good to know, and you might not think of it.
LGBTQ Nation: What’s been the most satisfying part of Equaldex for you so far?
DL: I think seeing the big publications and organizations use the site. There are a bunch of Ivy League schools that reference Equaldex for their students when they’re traveling. The UN, the UK Government, the US government, they’ve all read it and reference it. It makes me really proud, like, “Wow, this is something that people are very interested in.” So it kind of validates the work I’ve been doing for many years.
At a more personal level, hearing that people use it and it’s super helpful is super validating. When people say, like, “Oh, I always use it. Make sure to check Equaldex before you travel,” it’s really rewarding to hear it’s helpful to people in that way.
