LONDON - Millions of people joined Pride marches around the world in 2019 and gay, bisexual and transgender rights were increasingly in the spotlight, with some countries legalizing gay marriage while others mulled the death penalty for same-sex relations.
The year also marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots against police brutality in New York City, which triggered the modern movement for LGBT+ rights in Western countries.
Here are 10 stories from a year of change for many LGBT+ people around the world:
1. Brunei and Uganda death penalty for gay sex
In March it was revealed that the small East Asian country of Brunei was planning to implement changes to its Islamic penal code that would impose death by stoning for same-sex intimacy.
After a global backlash, with businesses and celebrities such as George Clooney and Elton John boycotting companies owned by Brunei, the sultanate announced in May that a moratorium on the death penalty would be extended.
In October, a Ugandan minister said the east African nation was planning to reintroduce a bill colloquially known as "Kill the Gays." The government denied that the death penalty would be imposed for gay sex following an international outcry.
2. Gabon criminalizes gay and lesbian sex
In July, the central African nation of Gabon banned "sexual relations between people of the same sex", introducing a penalty of up to 6 months in prison and a fine of 5 million CFA francs ($8,482 or P429,867).
The change was not widely reported until later in the year, but an activist who monitors LGBT+ rights in West Africa said he had spoken to 2 Gabonese men arrested under the new law who had to bribe police to be released.
3. Kenya upholds gay sex ban
Kenya's High Court upheld a British colonial-era law criminalizing gay sex by up to 14 years in jail in May, throwing out a petition by LGBT+ campaigners on the grounds that same-sex relations clashed with traditional moral values.
Advocates said the law promoted homophobia in the socially conservative and religious East African nation and violated constitutional rights to privacy, equality and dignity. They are appealing the ruling.
4. Botswana legalizes gay sex
In June, Botswana legalized same-sex relations when the High Court overturned a colonial-era law that had punished consensual gay sex by up to 7 years in prison.
"Discrimination has no place in this world," Justice Michael Leburu said in his ruling, which followed previous judgments in the southern African country that had recognized the right of LGBT+ people to equal protection before the law.
5. Same-sex marriage spreads
Taiwan became the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage in May, despite two-thirds of people voting in a referendum in November 2018 to retain the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.
The self-ruled island was followed by Ecuador in June, with the South American nation becoming the 27th country in the world to allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.
The following month, the British parliament voted to extend same-sex marriage to Northern Ireland.
6. Trump's transgender military ban goes into effect
The United States implemented a law in April that banned openly trans people from enlisting in the military, with President Donald Trump stating that trans service members would cause "tremendous medical costs and disruption".
It reversed a policy of Trump's predecessor, President Barack Obama.
7. Brazil's top court rules homophobia is a crime
In May, Brazil's Supreme Court ruled that homophobia and transphobia were crimes under existing anti-discrimination laws in the South American country. This outlawed violence against LGBT+ people and made it illegal to deny them access to education, jobs, shops and public buildings.
The ruling came after President Jair Bolsonaro, a self-proclaimed "proud homophobe", removed LGBT+ responsibilities from the human rights ministry after taking office in January.
8. LGBT-free zones spread in Poland
Poland's ruling Law and Justice Party in campaigns for the European Union elections in May and national elections in October depicted "LGBT ideology" as foreign ideas that undermined traditional values.
While Warsaw's mayor signed a pro-LGBT+ declaration in February, dozens of towns - mostly in conservative, rural Poland - declared themselves "LGBT free" and Pride marches in some cities were attacked by protesters.
9. Georgia Pride marchers defy far-right threats
While millions marched in global Pride celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising this summer, in Tbilisi, Georgia, LGBT+ people and their allies had to scale down their parade amid far-right threats.
In November, the premiere of a film about gay love in the country was attacked by violent ultra-nationalist demonstrators, more than 25 of whom were arrested.
10. "Conversion therapy" bans spread
Germany's cabinet in December backed a law that would ban so-called conversion therapy for minors, as a global movement to end discredited practices that aim to change someone's gender identity or sexual orientation gathered pace.
Conversion therapy, which has been widely condemned by medical associations around the world as ineffective and detrimental to mental health, is illegal in Malta, Ecuador, Brazil and Taiwan.
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PARIS - The first-ever gay civil unions in Denmark 30 years ago paved the way for full same-sex marriages that are today allowed in 28 countries, even though homosexuality remains illegal in some parts of the world.
Here is an overview.
Europe, gay marriage pioneers
On October 1, 1989, for the first time in the world, several gay couples in Denmark tied the knot in legal civil unions.
Danish homosexual couples would however have to wait until 2012 to be allowed to marry in church.
The right to a religious marriage ceremony was first allowed in The Netherlands in 2001.
Thirteen European countries followed: Belgium, Britain (although not Northern Ireland), Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.
Austria allowed gay marriage from 2019.
Some countries allow only gay civil partnerships including Croatia, Cyprus, The Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland.
The Czech government has backed draft legislation that would make the country the first post-communist member of the European Union to legalize same-sex marriage, but its fate is uncertain.
Slovenia also allows civil partnerships but in 2015 rejected in a referendum a proposal to legalize gay marriage.
In 2014 Estonia became the first former Soviet republic to authorize same-sex civil unions.
In Romania a referendum aimed at enshrining a ban on gay marriage in the constitution failed in 2018 because of a low turnout.
Progress in the Americas
Canada was the first American country to authorize same-sex marriage in 2005.
In 2015 the US Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide at a time it was banned in 14 out of 50 states.
The United States' first gay marriage had actually taken place in 1971, when a Minnesota couple obtained a marriage licence thanks to an overlooked legal loophole. The marriage was officially recognized in March 2019, after a five-decade legal battle.
In Latin America five countries allow same-sex marriages: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay, joined by Ecuador in June 2019.
Mexico's federal capital authorized gay civil unions in 2007 and marriages in 2009. Half of its 32 states have followed.
Chile legalized gay civil unions in 2015.
Costa Rica's Supreme Court in 2018 ruled that a ban on same-sex marriages was unconstitutional and gave parliament 18 months to amend the laws.
Cuba left out of its new constitution adopted in February 2019 changes that would have paved the way for legal same-sex marriage. The definition of marriage will be left to a new Family Code which will be put to a referendum.
Taiwan, first in Asia
While much of Asia is tolerant of homosexuality, Taiwan became in May 2019 the first in the region to allow gay marriage.
In the Middle East, where homosexuality is repressed, Israel leads the way in terms of gay rights, recognizing same-sex marriages that are performed elsewhere although not allowing such unions in the country itself.
Several countries in the conservative region still have the death penalty for homosexuality, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Australia (2017) and New Zealand (2013) are the only places in the wider Asia-Pacific region to have passed gay marriage laws.
Africa: marriage in one country
South Africa is the sole nation on the African continent to allow gay marriage, which it legalized in 2006.
Around 30 African countries ban homosexuality, with Mauritania, Somalia and Sudan having the death penalty for same-sex relations.
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MOSCOW - Receiving photos of mutilated bodies with the warning "you're next" rattled gay rights activist Nikita Tomilov but when he saw surveillance men outside his home, he fled Russia for good.
The threats via social media came from Pila - Russian for "saw" - a homophobic group which has said it was behind the fatal stabbing in July of an LGBT+ activist whose name was among a dozen on their widely-circulated assassination "blacklist".
"I went to the police when I saw two masked men lurking outside my apartment, but they said they couldn't do anything without proof that these men were there," Tomilov, 22, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation via Skype from a European country.
"What kind of proof could I bring them? And my family members started receiving threats as well. I realised it was too dangerous for me to stay in Russia."
Elena Grigoryeva, 41, was stabbed eight times in the face and back in St Petersburg. The Investigative Committee, which handles major crimes, said she was murdered by a local resident she had been drinking with and detained two suspects.
Although the police did not treat the murder as a hate crime initially, they promised to investigate whether Pila had anything to do with Grigoryeva's death after complaints from lesbian gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT+) rights groups.
Pila - which takes its name from the "Saw" American horror movies - is the latest threat to shake the LGBT+ community in Russia, where homosexuality was deemed a criminal offence until 1993 and classed as a mental illness until 1999.
Violence against gay people and hostility from the wider community has been on the rise since 2013 when the Kremlin adopted a gay "propaganda" law as part of a drive to defend what President Vladimir Putin called Russia's "traditional values".
LGBT+ campaigners say the law has helped authorities crack down on activists and contributed to a rise in anti-LGBT+ hate crimes as well as police reluctance to investigate them.
The Russian LGBT Network, which offers legal aid to gay people, said only eight out of 64 cases of physical violence against LGBT+ people that it received in 2018 were investigated by the police.
Moscow police headquarters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova did not respond to requests for comment. In several public statements, Putin has said there is no discrimination against LGBT+ people in Russia.
ATTACKS
Pila has used its website, Instagram, Russia's biggest social network VK and messaging app Telegram to call for gay Russians to be deported, posted a list of LGBT+ activists to be assassinated, and offered cash rewards for attacks on them.
Opinions differ on the danger it poses. The size of the vigilante group, which became active online in mid-2018, and the identities of its backers remain unclear.
Tomilov believes it is a powerful organisation capable of murder, while others see it merely an intimidation campaign, unlikely to go beyond online threats.
"We can't be certain it's a real group that can organise physical attacks on people," said Igor Kochetkov, head of the Russian LGBT Network.
"There isn't a single confirmed fact of assaults, let alone murders, committed by the so-called Pila. What we're seeing is a website that comes and goes, emails and messages on social media."
Pila's website and all of its online accounts were blocked last month after complaints from activists who fear its threats are fuelling homophobia and violence against LGBT+ people.
"They openly call for violence against certain people, but law enforcement has taken no action whatsoever," said Alexander Kondakov, a sociologist at Finland's University of Helsinki who authored a study on anti-gay hate crimes in Russia.
"This terrible situation encourages not just Pila itself, but others like them, too - people see that these actions go unpunished.
LGBT+ rights group Vykhod said the police promised to examine and analyse screenshots of Pilas website last week.
UNPUNISHED
Vitaly Bespalov, editor of the gay news site ParniPlus, received an email on Aug. 26 instructing him to kill Maxim Lapunov - a gay man who went public about being kidnapped and tortured in Chechnya - before Oct. 1 or else be killed himself.
"You, surely, haven't forgotten that boozer Yelena Grigoryeva?" said the email, written in Russian in capital letters, sent from an email address containing Pila's name.
"Our slave offed her – but you'll never find those who ordered it," said the email, seen by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, using a slang phrase meaning to kill someone.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation was unable to independently authenticate the email or reach Pila for comment. Emails sent to the address used to threaten Bespalov failed to deliver "due to a permission or security issue".
"I filed a complaint to the Interior Ministry," said Bespalov. "But they know they will go unpunished. If they wrote something against Putin, the police would have found them the next day. They understand that no one will even look for them."
Alexei Nazarov, an LGBT+ activist from St Petersburg, was targeted in an identical email on Aug. 26, which was sent to one of his friends who was instructed to kill him. Nazarov declined to name the friend who received the email for safety reasons.
Nazarov said he thought Pila was just a creepy online campaign but its calls for violence were dangerous.
"What if someone mentally unstable reads it, interprets it as a call to action and kills me for real?" he asked.
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MADRID, Spain—Dozens of men and a few women in stiletto heels raced through the center of the Spanish capital on Thursday, defying gravity, the heat and attempts by the far-right party Vox to curtail their Gay Pride celebrations this year.
The race in Chueca, a gay-friendly neighborhood in central Madrid, draws competitors from abroad and is one of the most eagerly awaited parts of the annual festival of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.
The race attracts the young and old, the athletic and the portly. Reaching the finish line is no easy task: rules state that heels must be at least 10 cm (4 inches) high, and the shoes are measured before the race.
Madrid Pride, one of the world’s largest LGBT celebrations, will culminate in a parade in the city center on Saturday.
The ultra-conservative Vox, a political newcomer that won about 10 percent of the vote in April's national election and recently enabled the center-right to take over the Madrid city hall, has increasingly attacked the festival and LGBT rights in Spain.
Vox wants to move the Pride Parade from the city center to a park in the suburbs.
Vox's Madrid regional branch head, Rocio Monasterio, told La Contra TV on Tuesday the celebrations "denigrate people's dignity."
"When a mother, a father step outside there is no reason for them to stumble into this spectacle... involving explicit sexual acts in the street at daytime."
During the high heels run, there were chants against Vox.
Javier Garcia, a 23-year-old nurse, wants the race to stay in Madrid's center to keep it visible.
"People still have to fight and make visible certain inequalities that are still not fully resolved," he said before taking part in the race.
Garcia said he felt nervous because it was his first time running in Madrid's event, although he had participated in a similar one in the Canary Islands.
The race winner gets 350 euros ($390).
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LONDON - British billionaire Richard Branson urged fellow business leaders on Thursday to use their clout and put pressure on countries such as Brunei that persecute citizens for their sexuality.
Brunei's decision to impose the death penalty for gay sex had spurred the call for action, Branson wrote in a blog posted on Virgin.com. He was joined by 20 other top executives, who put their names to a wider initiative in support of LGBT+ rights.
"Why take action now? The answer is simple. I feel that every opportunity to stand up for what we believe in is a good opportunity to shift the conversation on a global scale," said Branson, who made his fortune from a conglomerate of enterprises bearing the Virgin name.
John Fallon, chief executive of education group Pearson, and Paul Polman, former chief executive of consumer goods company Unilever, were among 21 signatories of an initiative supported by Open For Business, a coalition of global firms promoting LGBT+ inclusion.
"It is time for all of us, as business leaders and as human beings, to stand up to ensure that people are free from the fear of abuse for who they love," the 21 signatories wrote.
"This is our responsibility to our employees, to our customers and to communities all over the world."
The initiative calls for businesses to create inclusive workplaces, actively support criminalized LGBT+ communities, and engage with repressive regimes on their policies.
More than 70 countries worldwide, including Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, enforce anti-LGBT+ laws.
Brunei, a small Southeast Asian country of about 400,000 people, sparked outcry last month when it rolled out laws penalizing sodomy, adultery and rape with the death penalty.
Celebrities, from actor George Clooney to singer Elton John, have galvanized support, with protesters boycotting the Dorchester Collection of hotels, owned by the Brunei Investment Agency.
A growing list of banks, including Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Citi and Nomura, have banned staff from using the hotels.
STA Travel and London's transport network have also begun to cut ties with businesses owned by the sultanate.
In a letter to the United Nations, Brunei has defended the imposition of strict sharia laws, which it began introducing in 2014, as more for "prevention than to punish."
Matt Cameron, managing director of investment industry organization LGBT Great, called for a boycott of countries that enacted anti-gay and anti-transgender laws.
"The financial services sector is a massive part of the global economy and carries a lot of clout," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"I do think there's a responsibility and an accountability for the industry to step up and use its force."
However, Daniel Winterfeldt, a partner in law firm Reed Smith's global capital markets practice, stressed the value of talking with governments, whatever their views.
"Engagement is incredibly important. If you build up a barrier, things can actually get worse," Winterfeldt said.
"When (business leaders) attend high-level meetings with governments, it is important that on their lists of concerns are equality issues."
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LONDON - Some of the world's largest companies said on Wednesday that plans to grant equal marriage to LGBT+ couples in Taiwan - the first Asian nation to do so - would boost the country's economy.
Taiwan's parliament is expected to vote by late May, a deadline set by the constitutional court when it ruled in 2017 that same-sex couples could legally wed.
Google, Airbnb, Deutsche Bank, EY, Mastercard and Microsoft have joined forces with nine other companies, including Taiwan-based O-Bank Co, to laud the benefits of same-sex weddings.
"We value diversity, inclusivity, respect, equality and non-discrimination, as well as seek to protect these values within our company and while working with our business partners," said Patrick Pan, enterprise public lead at Microsoft Taiwan.
"We do so not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because it can make our company and society stronger and more successful."
Economists say the benefits of same-sex marriage include increased productivity, greater labor mobility, and less stress in the workplace over perceived discrimination.
According to 2016 research from Swiss bank Credit Suisse, the performance of a basket of 270 companies that supported LGBT+ policies was on average 3 percent higher than that of the MSCI All Country World Index, which measures global stock movements.
AN ASIAN FIRST
Taiwan is set to become the first country in Asia to allow same-sex marriage following a 2017 ruling by the country's Constitutional Court that to deny gay and lesbian couples the right to marry violated the constitution.
However, Taiwanese voters rejected same-sex marriage in an advisory referendum last November, prompting concerns about whether the ruling would become law.
Under the terms of the court's judgement, lawmakers have until May 24 to pass legislation that will allow same-sex couples to wed. If the Taiwanese parliament fails to act, same-sex marriage will automatically become legal.
"Leveraging different perspectives fuels innovation, fosters collaboration and strengthens relationships," said EY's Taiwan country managing partner Andrew Fuh.
"This is why we believe that each of us has a role to play in advancing diversity and inclusion."
Taiwan's parliament is currently considering two bills offering couples differing rights ahead of the May 24 deadline.
Jennifer Lu, chief co-ordinator of Marriage Equality Coalition Taiwan, said passing marriage equality would send a message to the world that "Taiwan is open for business."
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LONDON - Travel agents, London's transport network, and finance houses were among a rising number of companies on Friday to cut ties with businesses owned by Brunei to protest over the Sultanate's introduction of the death penalty for gay sex and adultery.
The small Muslim-majority former British protectorate on April 3 rolled out further Islamic Sharia laws, which punish sodomy, adultery, and rape with death, including by stoning, and theft with amputation, sparking a global outcry.
The move prompted a corporate backlash after actor George Clooney and singer Elton John called for a boycott of hotels owned by the Southeast Asian country, including the Dorchester in London and the Beverley Hills Hotel in Los Angeles.
STA Travel, a global travel agency owned by privately-held Swiss conglomerate Diethelm Keller Group, said it would no longer sell flights on national carrier Royal Brunei Airlines.
"We've taken this stance to add our voice to the calls on Brunei to reverse this change in the law and in support of LGBTQI people everywhere," the company said in a statement.
Virgin Australia Airlines, the second biggest airline in Australia after Qantas, ended an agreement that offered discounted tickets on Royal Brunei Airlines for staff.
Royal Brunei did not respond to requests for comment.
Transport For London (TfL), which is responsible for London's transport system, said it was removing adverts promoting Brunei as a tourism destination from the city's public transport network due to "great public sensitivity."
Deutsche Bank banned its staff from staying in the 9 luxury hotels of the Dorchester Collection, which is owned by Brunei's state-owned Brunei Investment Agency (BIA).
BIA did not respond to a request for comment. The UK-based Sovereign Wealth Center estimates the BIA has US$39 billion of assets under management.
The Dorchester Collection made a public appeal, saying its values were "far removed from the politics of ownership".
"We understand people's anger and frustration but this is a political and religious issue that we don't believe should be played out in our hotels and amongst our 3,630 employees," the Dorchester Collection said in a statement on its website.
But this did not prevent numerous organizations moving their events elsewhere.
British estate agent Knight Frank, property industry networking group Movers and Shakers, which has about 300 corporate members, and property investment company Landsec said they would not use Dorchester Collection hotels.
As well as owning the hotel group, the BIA holds about 4 percent of London-listed digital tech venture capital firm Draper Esprit PLC which it acquired in 2018.
Draper Esprit's CEO Simon Cook said the company "naturally abhor" the moves in Brunei but added the BIA bought shares on the open market and has no "influence either on our company culture or our investment decisions".
The backlash also spread to universities.
More than 50,000 people signed a petition calling on Oxford University to rescind an honorary degree awarded to Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, 72, the world's second-longest reigning monarch and prime minister of the oil-rich country.
The university's information office said they shared the international condemnation of Brunei's new penal code and backed the United Nations' call to stop this entering into force.
"At present, the University has not taken any decision on rescinding the Sultan of Brunei's 1993 Honorary Degree of Civil Law by Diploma," the university said in a statement.
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LOS ANGELES - The Mormon Church on Thursday announced it would now allow the children of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender parents to be baptized, regardless of whether the parents are members.
The decision is "effective immediately," said the Church, officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in a statement.
The new policy allows a child to be blessed as a baby and baptized at age eight.
"Previously, our handbook characterized same-gender marriage by a member as apostasy," or a denial of faith, the statement said.
"While we still consider such a marriage to be a serious transgression, it will not be treated as apostasy for purposes of Church discipline. Instead, the immoral conduct in heterosexual or homosexual relationships will be treated in the same way."
The Church added it wanted to "reduce the hate and contention so common today" -- but insisted its overall teachings had not changed.
"These changes do not represent a shift in Church doctrine related to marriage or the commandments of God in regard to chastity and morality," it said.
Founded in 1830, the Mormon Church, whose headquarters are located in Salt Lake City, Utah, has 16 million members and says its mission is to restore a true church in preparation for the return of Jesus Christ.
Its informal name refers to the "Book of Mormon" -- named after an old prophet -- which followers believe is a restored version of the true word of Jesus, rather than traditional Christian scripture.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints also advocates for baptizing dead people who were not baptized while alive -- a practice which sees a living person baptized to baptize the dead person by proxy, even if they lived several generations before.
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EDINBURGH - Celebrity couple George and Amal Clooney said on Thursday they wanted to use their star power to push for justice globally for women, children, LGBT+ people, religious minorities, and journalists.
The 57-year-old Hollywood actor said some countries were using courts to do "really rotten things" and it was important to "shine a light" on where this was happening.
The couple's Clooney Foundation for Justice, set up in 2016, plans to this year launch, TrialWatch, a project to monitor trials and create an index to track which countries are using courtrooms to oppress minorities and government critics.
Amal Clooney, an international human rights lawyer, said it was important to expose injustices and the countries using courts to target vulnerable people, human rights defenders, and press freedom.
"We now have the highest number of journalists in jail in the world since records began," she told a charity gala organized by the People's Postcode Lottery in Edinburgh.
The Clooneys, who married in 2014, said they were both committed to using their fame to raise awareness about human rights abuses and corruption.
Amal Clooney, 41, said her job was less glamorous than it might seem as it mainly involved piling through vast amounts of paperwork but their fame could be used to their advantage.
"It helps when we want to engage governments to act or business leaders," said the British-Lebanese lawyer.
Her actor husband also played down the glamour of fame, joking about being the father of one-year-old twins, but acknowledged that he had always been determined to use the public spotlight to do good.
"I didn't grow up wealthy," he said. "If you end up getting lucky, you should share that luck."
The Clooneys were in Scotland to collect an award from the People's Postcode Lottery for their humanitarian work.
Britain's People's Postcode Lottery is one of several charity lotteries set up in Europe since 1989 by the Netherlands-based social enterprise Novamedia.
The lottery awards cash prizes and also donates about 32 percent of sales to charity, which has totaled more than 400 million pounds ($530 million) since 2005.
The organization has given money to some of George Clooney's other charities and has also made a grant to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters.
($1 = 0.7602 pounds)
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An estimated 4.5 percent of US adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, and they tend to be younger and poorer than the population at large, according to an analysis of polling data released on Tuesday.
The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law examined previously released results from the Gallup Daily Tracking survey and went deeper into the data, enabling a more detailed demographic picture of the adult US LGBT population of roughly 11.3 million people.
The institute found Washington, D.C., had the highest percentage of LGBT people at 9.8 percent and North Dakota had the lowest at 2.7 percent.
The self-identifying LGBT population also skews younger. Only 23 percent are age 50 or older, compared with 47 percent of non-LGBT adults, and 56 percent of LGBT adults are under age 35 compared with 28 percent for the non-LGBT population.
"Younger people are more likely to actually live as LGBT and to identify that way because they are growing up in a time when it's more acceptable to acknowledge those feelings and to act on them," said Kerith Conron, research director at the Williams Institute.
The LGBT population is also economically disadvantaged: more likely to lack access to a sufficient nutrition or to have household incomes below $24,000, the analysis found.
Although LGBT people come from all ethnic groups, people of color represent a slightly higher percentage than they do in the general population for reasons that require more research, Conron said.
The Williams Institute, which specializes in LGBT research for law and public policy, also confirmed its previous estimate of the transgender population at 0.6 percent, or roughly 1.4 million US adults.
Conron said an apparent one-percentage-point increase in the LGBT population from 2011 was likely the result of more people feeling comfortable responding to questions about their sexual orientation.
In 2011, the Williams Institute estimated the US LGBT population at 3.5 percent based on other survey data.
Modern polls and surveys estimate the LGBT population well below a common but unattributed figure of 10 percent that sexologists link to an oversimplification of Alfred Kinsey's work some 70 years ago.
However, in surveys that are more anonymous and private, closer to 10 percent of respondents say they have some level of same-sex attraction even if they stop short of identifying themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual, Conron said.
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NEW YORK -- Los Angeles designer Pierre Davis made her debut in New York this week, becoming the first openly transgender creator to present a collection at Fashion Week, further shaking up an event that had already featured trans models.
The powerful Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), which says it represents more than 500 creators and has made diversity its battle cry, announced last month that Davis's No Sesso brand would be "making NYFW history" at Monday's event, which opened with a parade of whimsical garments.
Fashion Week began with a focus on men and will turn to women's wear on Thursday.
Davis told CFDA that she hopes the brand "will inspire people to be more community-minded and to realize not everything is just about aesthetics or commerce. It's also about humanity."
She added it is important "that people of all intersectional identities are given a fighting chance regardless of their identity. The playing field isn't level in the world, and it is even more difficult in fashion."
While she embraces her identity as a trans woman in the design field, Davis doesn't want it to be a gimmick, telling AFP it's important for people to see the creations and for them to be recognized.
"I just want to show the work," she said of the agender brand No Sesso, which was launched in 2015 and -- according to CFDA -- counts fans including R&B artists Kelela and Erykah Badu.
"I am just humble and happy that I got to show at Fashion Week," Davis said.
For her Chapter 2 collection -- she calls them "chapters" rather than seasons -- Davis came up with the idea of a wardrobe that blends the sartorial codes associated with the two sexes.
Plain black vests became skirts, cocktail dresses were transformed, and worn with self-assurance by models whose diversity -- male or female, slender or plus-size -- reflected Fashion Week's growing efforts to look beyond the conventional razor-thin body type.
The wardrobe mixed the formalism of work attire with sportswear, producing a jogging jacket with epaulettes, for example.
Davis emphasizes that the label is "very much an LA brand," adding: "We're super-fun and easy to be around."
"The show is inspired by business wear and evoking the spirit of the Glamazon regardless of gender," Davis told CFDA.
It's about making things happen even "when there seems to be no way."
For several years, trans models have regularly appeared at New York Fashion Week, and in September 2017 Calvin Klein featured a 16-year-old trans model.
Last September Marco Marco, another Los Angeles designer, went further with a podium exclusively showing trans models.
Now, with her first New York show, Davis says everybody "can see No Sesso and the world we're creating."
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NEW YORK -- The CEO of American clothing and lingerie brand Victoria's Secret has resigned amid flagging sales and controversy around a lack of diversity at the line's iconic annual fashion show, a source said Wednesday.
A source familiar with the matter said CEO Jan Singer, who had been in the position since September 2016, would leave the company, but did not specify when.
American media outlets had reported the move without specifying the reason, and Victoria's Secret parent company, L Brands, declined to comment.
The departure comes less than a week after the brand's marketing director Ed Razek garnered anger for saying in a Vogue interview that Victoria's Secret had thought about and decided against including transgender or plus-size models in their show, which this year was held in New York on Nov. 8.
"We attempted to do a television special for plus-sizes (in 2000). No one had any interest in it, still don't," Razek told the magazine.
The director cited pop star Rihanna's Savage X Fenty line, which carries plus sizes, but said Victoria's Secret didn't want to include new models just to be "politically correct," and that they are a "specialty business" which doesn't market to everyone.
The comments sparked a surge of criticism on social media, to the point that Razek issued a public apology, saying that the brand wouldn't object to hiring a transgender model.
Outside of that controversy, Singer's departure as CEO comes at a difficult time for the lingerie company, which has suffered from a slow-down in recent years. Sales fell eight percent in 2017.
In the first half of 2018, L Brand, its parent company, was able to stabilize Victoria's Secret, particularly thanks to the opening of several stores in China and to the growth of online sales.
Critics say the its issues come because the brand and its models haven't been able to adapt to the market's new demands.
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A Filipino-American transgender is slowly tiptoeing her way to performance stages across the United States one grand jete at a time.
When she was 17 months old, Jay, who was born in Leyte, moved to Indiana after the Ledford family adopted her.
As a toddler, Jay prodded her foster parents to enroll her in ballet school.
"I was the only boy at my studio in Indiana, and all I ever wanted was to wear a leotard," Jay said.
Her parents "un-enrolled" her from the ballet studio after the school said boys were not allowed to dance in leotards.
"My parents un-enrolled me and took me to a studio across town, where I enrolled as a female," she said.
Five years into learning pirouettes and splits and arabesques, Jay bagged full scholarships for summer ballet intensives at the Kirov Academy, the Rock School of Dance, and Pittsburgh Ballet Theater.
Jay brought her skills and dancing dreams wherever the family moved.
When the Ledford family decided to live in Salisbury, Maryland in 2008, Jay trained at the Salisbury Dance Academy and performed with the Eastern Shore Ballet Theater in major roles in the "Nutcracker," "Coppelia," and "The Seven Dwarfs," and many others.
Jay also performed at Disney World in Orlando in Florida.
When the family relocated to Delaware in 2015, Jay started training with Michele Xiques, director of First State Dance Academy.
Jay became a full-time ballet dancer in 2017 after she graduated from high school. It was also when she fully embraced her gender.
"While at the Kirov, I began truly figuring out who I was," she said.
"It was a difficult period of time because I wasn't sure who I could trust."
Jay eventually admitted to being a transgender through a social media post.
"Those final months of the school year were the greatest, because I was able to finally be myself—everyone treated me as me, and nothing different," she said.
"That Instagram post sparked so many direct messages about how inspirational I was to people, or how my story had helped others come out to their own families," she said.
Despite the support she received, opportunities are still "being taken away" because of her gender, Jay said.
"A lot of companies and studios where I danced as a male aren't receptive to me as a female," she said.
"It's definitely hard because you want to be accepted everywhere, but unfortunately, it's not like that," she said.
Jay -- just like her 5-year-old self who refused to drop her ballet shoes when told that she could not dance in leotards -- is nowhere near giving up.
She is training to audition for some ballet companies and colleges where she hopes to further her training en pointe and choreography.
"I'm taking the next year off to train fully as a female and master my pointe technique," she said.
"I hope to end up in a company, and would absolutely love to dance Giselle, Juliet, Odette/Odile, and Aurora—you know, the roles that every little girl dreams of doing when she grows up and finally becomes a ballerina," she said. -- with a report from Jon Melegrito
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MIAMI, United States- Transgender people in Puerto Rico can now modify their birth certificates to match their gender identity after activists won a lawsuit against the US territory's governor.
The change, which went into effect Monday, will comply with a ruling from the US District Court for Puerto Rico, which in April struck down the island's policy preventing transgender people living there from correcting gender on birth certificates.
"The right to identify our own existence lies at the heart of one's humanity," wrote US District Judge Carmen Consuelo Cerezo at the time. "And so, we must heed their voices: 'the woman that I am,' 'the man that I am.'"
The latest victory for the LGBT community leaves just three US states that prohibit amending the gender marker on the official identification documents: Kansas, Ohio, and Tennessee.
"It's a relief to finally have a birth certificate that truly reflects who I am," said one of the plaintiffs, Daniela Arroyo, in a statement released by Lambda Legal, an LGBT civil rights nonprofit.
Omar Gonzalez Pagan, a lawyer for Lambda Legal, said the group had already filed suit against Ohio's rule.
In its statement, the group said almost one-third of transgender people whose identity documents are at odds with the gender they appear to be have been denied benefits or services and faced harassment or assault.
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LOS ANGELES, United States - Scarlett Johansson has quit an upcoming movie role as a transgender criminal following an angry backlash against her casting, she revealed in an interview reported widely in US media on Friday.
The actress was to have taken the lead part in "Rub and Tug," the story of Dante "Tex" Gill, a massage parlor operator and pimp who became a major crime figure in the 1970s and 80s. Born Lois Jean Gill, he identified as male.
"In light of recent ethical questions raised surrounding my casting as Dante Tex Gill, I have decided to respectfully withdraw my participation in the project," the 33-year-old told Out Magazine.
"Our cultural understanding of transgender people continues to advance, and I've learned a lot from the community since making my first statement about my casting and realize it was insensitive."
When Johansson's casting was announced, she and the project were berated on social media for not handing someone from the community the opportunity, with trans actresses Trace Lysette and Jamie Clayton leading the charge.
Johansson's representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but have previously released a statement pointing out that Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto and Felicity Huffman have all made successes of transgender roles.
"While I would have loved the opportunity to bring Dante's story and transition to life, I understand why many feel he should be portrayed by a transgender person, and I am thankful that this casting debate, albeit controversial, has sparked a larger conversation about diversity and representation in film," Johansson added.
The actress cited figures from GLAAD -- formerly the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation -- showing LGBTQ characters dropped 40 percent in 2017 from the previous year, with no trans characters in major studio releases.
There was no immediate word on the effect of Johansson's exit on the production schedule for "Rub and Tug."
Members of the online transgender community were largely supportive, praising the actress for making a stand but highlighting the long path to equality that must still be negotiated.
"Thank you Scarlett Johansson for pulling out of 'Rub and Tug'... Now the real work begins," tweeted civil rights activist and media personality Ashlee Marie Preston.
"This has been a long time coming Hollywood. But the trans community is ready if you are."
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WASHINGTON - Transgender people will be allowed for the first time to enlist in the US military starting on Monday as ordered by federal courts, the Pentagon said on Friday, after President Donald Trump's administration decided not to appeal rulings that blocked his transgender ban.
Two federal appeals courts, one in Washington and one in Virginia, last week rejected the administration's request to put on hold orders by lower court judges requiring the military to begin accepting transgender recruits on Jan. 1.
A Justice Department official said the administration will not challenge those rulings.
"The Department of Defense has announced that it will be releasing an independent study of these issues in the coming weeks. So rather than litigate this interim appeal before that occurs, the administration has decided to wait for DOD's study and will continue to defend the president's lawful authority in District Court in the meantime," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In September, the Pentagon said it had created a panel of senior officials to study how to implement a directive by Trump to prohibit transgender individuals from serving. The Defense Department has until Feb. 21 to submit a plan to Trump.
Lawyers representing currently-serving transgender service members and aspiring recruits said they had expected the administration to appeal the rulings to the conservative-majority Supreme Court, but were hoping that would not happen.
Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb said in a statement: "As mandated by court order, the Department of Defense is prepared to begin accessing transgender applicants for military service Jan. 1. All applicants must meet all accession standards."
Jennifer Levi, a lawyer with gay, lesbian and transgender advocacy group GLAD, called the decision not to appeal "great news."
"I’m hoping it means the government has come to see that there is no way to justify a ban and that it’s not good for the military or our country," Levi said. Both GLAD and the American Civil Liberties Union represent plaintiffs in the lawsuits filed against the administration.
"COSTS AND DISRUPTION"
In a move that appealed to his hard-line conservative supporters, Trump announced in July that he would prohibit transgender people from serving in the military, reversing Democratic President Barack Obama's policy of accepting them. Trump said on Twitter at the time that the military "cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail."
Four federal judges - in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Seattle and Riverside, California - have issued rulings blocking Trump's ban while legal challenges to the Republican president's policy proceed. The judges said the ban would likely violate the right under the US Constitution to equal protection under the law.
The Pentagon on Dec. 8 issued guidelines to recruitment personnel in order to enlist transgender applicants by Jan. 1. The memo outlined medical requirements and specified how the applicants' sex would be identified and even which undergarments they would wear.
The Trump administration previously said in legal papers that the armed forces were not prepared to train thousands of personnel on the medical standards needed to process transgender applicants and might have to accept "some individuals who are not medically fit for service."
The Obama administration had set a deadline of July 1, 2017, to begin accepting transgender recruits. But Trump's defense secretary James Mattis postponed that date to Jan. 1, 2018, which the President's ban then put off indefinitely.
Trump has taken other steps aimed at rolling back transgender rights.
In October, his administration said a federal law banning gender-based workplace discrimination does not protect transgender employees, reversing another Obama-era position.
In February, Trump rescinded guidance issued by the Obama administration saying that public schools should allow transgender students to use the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity.
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LONDON - Bullied and beaten, analyzed and abused, Justin Romanov finally accepted his life in Russia was over. Being gay was a dance with death.
"I felt like I had two options: I'm going to live as I am, or I'm going to die. Nothing else is possible ... I cannot hide it. I cannot pretend to be straight," he said.
Aged 18, he escaped to Canada, where he joined a crack team helping lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people flee from countries where homosexuality is banned or violently repressed.
Earlier this year he was involved in the Toronto-based group's successful effort to bring to safety more than 30 Chechens, amid reports of mass arrests and torture of LGBT people in the deeply conservative Russian region.
As a volunteer for the group, Romanov helped them adapt to their new reality, assisting with accommodation, paperwork and bank accounts, as many did not speak English.
"I want to do as much as I can in my power to help other people, particularly from Russia," Romanov, now 22, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.
Advocacy group Rainbow Railroad covertly brought the Chechens, most aged between 19 and 25, out of Russia through a network of safehouses after news of mass detention of LGBT people first emerged in April.
Most had to leave in haste, bringing with them nothing more than a backpack or what they were wearing, said Rainbow Railroad's executive director, Kimahli Powell.
"Some people...had never left their home and all of a sudden were leaving for good, so they were pretty traumatized," he said.
The Chechens were among more than 150 LGBT people that the group helped resettle in 2017.
This year was a record year for the group, named in homage to a 19th-century network of safe houses and secret paths used by slaves to escape bondage in the United States, said Powell.
It has so far received more than 1,000 requests for help, twice as many as in 2016.
The boom was fuelled by Chechnya and anti-gay crackdowns in Azerbaijan, Egypt and Indonesia, adding to its traditional work in hotspots such as Jamaica and Uganda, said Powell.
"Unfortunately there seems to be a wave of homophobic backlash," he said during an interview in London.
Homosexuality is outlawed in more than 70 nations and punishable with death in eight, including Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, according to ILGA, an international LGBT rights group.
"Sometimes people are facing imminent danger and need to leave the country," Powell said ahead of speaking at the Thomson Reuters Foundation's annual two-day Trust Conference.
Rainbow Railroad helps them find the best way out, taking care of visas and travel, including a plane ticket.
A TICKET TO HEAVEN
Romanov knows what it means to leave everything behind.
Born in Ulyanovsk, a city 800 kilometers east of Moscow, he came out as gay at the age of 14 - meeting a chilling reception from the local community and his own family.
His father accused him of bringing shame to his house, while his aunt took him to a psychologist to be "cured".
At school he was beaten up and bullied.
Tired of the abuse, he wrote for help to his then-idol: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The letter went unanswered but three months later his parents were called in by local police and told it was in their son's best interest to keep his sexuality under wraps.
Homosexuality is not a crime in Russia but activists say homophobia is rife and a law banning the dissemination of information on LGBT issues to young people has fuelled anti-gay abuse, discrimination and violence.
The government says the legislation is solely designed "to defend morality and children's health" and does not amount to a ban of homosexuality.
Russia ranked as the second worst country in Europe for LGBT people in a 2017 survey by ILGA.
By the time he turned 16, Romanov felt his hometown was no longer safe.
"When I walked on the street with my mum, random people would stop their car and call me 'f****t'," he said.
But leaving home and moving to the capital of Moscow brought no respite from the endless barrage of threats and violence.
Even walking down the street with his boyfriend gave bystanders enough reason to beat them until they drew blood.
The wake-up call came when a gay friend was attacked and died in front of him - Romanov knew the same fate awaited him.
Supported by his mother, who came to accept her son's sexual orientation, Romanov fled to Canada in 2013.
"It felt like I died and went to heaven. I thought it wasn't real," he said, referring to his new life in Toronto.
"Everyone accepts me the way I am. No one cares if I'm gay or straight," he said.
He is now studying to become a human rights lawyer.
"I don't want young Russian people ever to experience what I experienced," he said.
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An American Democrat made history on Tuesday by becoming Virginia's -- and possibly the nation's -- first openly transgender state delegate, winning her bid for a seat in the legislature.
In a campaign that garnered national attention, musician and former journalist Danica Roem, 33, prevailed in her race against Republican Robert Marshall, who has served as a delegate for a quarter century and once referred to himself as Virginia's "chief homophobe."
With 95 percent of the vote counted, Roem was leading with 55 percent of the vote against Marshall's 45 percent.
The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund described Roem as the only out transgender person in US history to win a seat in a state legislature.
"Tonight voters chose a smart, solutions-oriented trans leader over a divisive anti-LGBTQ demagogue, sending a powerful message to anti-trans legislators all across the nation," Victory Fund president Aisha Moodie-Mills said in a statement.
Roem rode to victory on strong fundraising by the Victory Fund and other pro-LGBT groups and voters, which helped her grass-roots effort to raise awareness of her campaign in Virginia's Prince William County.
She will now serve 2 years in the House of Delegates in Richmond, where Democrats gained several seats Tuesday and appeared close to seizing control of the legislature from Republicans.
The former journalist emphasized last month that she was not entering politics to be an LGBTQ symbol, under a president who recently banned transgender people from serving in the military.
Instead she aimed to take on municipal issues using the knowledge she amassed during nearly a decade covering local news for the Gainesville Times paper.
The septuagenarian Marshall -- a staunch gay marriage opponent -- refused to use the pronoun "she" when referring to Roem during the campaign, and he also refuses to debate her.
In a brief statement on Facebook, Marshall thanked his supporters.
"For 26 years I've been proud to fight for you, and fight for our future. Though we all wish tonight would have turned out differently, I am deeply grateful for your support and effort over the years," he wrote.
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WASHINGTON - The Pentagon said on Friday that it had created a panel of senior officials to study how to implement a directive by President Donald Trump to ban transgender individuals serving in the U.S. military.
In the meantime, existing policy would remain in force, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Robert Manning told reporters.
Last month, Trump signed a memorandum that directed the military not to accept transgender men and women as recruits.
It also ordered Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to determine in the coming months how to handle transgender individuals currently serving, using criteria including "military effectiveness and lethality," budget constraints, and law.
Trump's move appealed to his conservative political base but was heavily condemned by advocates of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. It has also created uncertainty for thousands of transgender service members.
The Pentagon has until February to provide an implementation plan to the White House and until then transgender service members can serve. Under Obama last year, the Pentagon ended its ban on transgender people serving openly, calling the prohibition outdated.
"Current transgender service members will continue to serve throughout the military and continue to receive necessary medical treatment as prescribed by their medical provider," Manning said.
Mattis had directed the deputy secretary of defense and vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff to develop an implementation plan, Manning said. The panel would include other senior military officials, including outside experts.
Separately, four U.S. senators, including John McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, introduced legislation that would not allow the Pentagon to remove present service members based on their gender identity.
"When less than 1 percent of Americans are volunteering to join the military, we should welcome all those who are willing and able to serve our country," McCain said.
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Pakistan has issued its first third-gender passport to a transgender activist, who hailed the move as a step forward for the marginalized community in the deeply conservative South Asian country.
Farzana Riaz, a transgender in northwestern Peshawar city, said the new passport would help her campaign globally on behalf of her community, who are also known as khawajasiras -- an umbrella term in Pakistan denoting a third sex that includes transsexuals, transvestites and eunuchs.
"I have received my passport which mentions my gender as X and not as a male or female," Farzana told AFP on Saturday.
"Earlier I had a passport which had described my gender as a male. But this time I told the authorities that I won't accept my passport if it doesn't identify me as a transgender," the 30-year-old co-founder and president of rights organisation TransAction said.
"Now it will be more convenient for me to travel abroad because earlier I faced problems at international airports because of a contradiction in my appearance and sex mention on my passport," she added.
Modern-day Pakistani transgender people claim to be cultural heirs of the eunuchs who thrived at the courts of the Mughal emperors that ruled the Indian subcontinent for two centuries until the British arrived in the 19th century and banned them.
In 2009, Pakistan became one of the first countries in the world to legally recognize a third sex, allowing transgenders to obtain identity cards, while several have also run in elections.
They number at least half a million people in the country, according to several studies.
Like Farzana, many earn their living by being called upon for rituals such as blessing newborns or to bring life to weddings and parties as dancers -- and, sometimes, in more clandestine ways.
But despite these signs of integration they live daily as pariahs, often reduced to begging and prostitution, subjected to extortion and discrimination.
Meanwhile homosexuality, prohibited by Islam, is punishable by 10 years imprisonment or even 100 lashes in Pakistan.
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