The top 13 countries with the biggest gay populations are surprisingly very rarely in the list of countries where gay marriage is legal. Click to skip ahead and jump to the top 5 countries with the biggest gay populations.
The gay populations has come a long way from being persecuted for simply existing across the world, to being able to safely marry in over 20 countries. However, there is still a very long way to go, especially in many countries where being gay is equivalent to committing a serious crime, even though the former hurts no one, except perhaps some people’s feelings.
Wile the United States is known for claiming it champions human rights, we all know that it only champions the rights of white males. Every other population has faced some form of discrimination over the past century, and many still do, despite improvements being made. In the 1950s, homosexuals were said to be officially mentally ill and were barred from working in the federal government. In 1969, the Stonewall Inn in New York City was raided by police, a sanctuary for homosexuals, triggering outrage across the country and is said to be a landmark moment in the progress of gay rights. The fight for LGBT rights continued, culminating in all 50 states legalizing gay marriage between 2004 to 2015. Even a decade ago though, a famous personality coming out was almost unheard of, and often career suicide. Now, it is a much more common sight, even though a lot more still needs to be done. You can learn more about the US gay population if you take a look at the 11 states with the biggest gay population.
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As I mentioned earlier, in many countries, homosexuality is still illegal, and even punishable by death. Most of the countries who severely criminalize homosexuality are Muslim, as Islam has always severely been against homosexuality. Even in countries where its not a severe crime, or even not a crime at all, the stigma with homosexuality still exits, because of which many people are still reluctant in coming out. Most of these countries are present in the 15 most dangerous countries for gay travelers.
Since homosexuality is a naturally occurring event (no matter what your religion tells you) that is not affected by race, culture or any other discriminatory factor, every country should have a similar percentage of gay people. However, because of the aforementioned social and legal pressure, many people refuse to admit it, even under anonymity, and can even deny it to themselves in order to be accepted more easily. Secondly, gay people may move to other countries which are more receptive to homosexuals, such as the 11 most gay friendly cities in the world. Because of these limitations, there are very few studies, but we found a relevant one from the US National Center for Biotechnology Information, which calculated the number of gay and bisexual men in each country from UNAIDs estimates and social media. We also calculated the per capital homosexual population of each country after obtaining the total populations of each country from World Bank. So let’s take a look at the countries where homosexuals are most prevalent, starting with number 13:
13. Gambia
I bet you weren’t expecting Gambia here, were you? Gambia has strict laws against homosexuality, but the homosexual population has a strong presence in social media and hence, makes our list.
