Despite gains made in many parts of the world, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people are, in some regions, increasingly persecuted and denied basic human rights. Because bigotry thrives where we are silenced by fear, we've created this space for people to share stories of discrimination and survival. Read these stories, share them, and contribute your own. Let the world know that we will not be silent.
“In Uganda there is currently not a single Safe Housing project left…With five euros we could feed someone for three weeks, with ten euros we could buy a mattress. It doesn’t take countless donors, but just a few to rebuild a safe house.”
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“On a warm August day in 1960, at the age of five my Devout, Irish, Catholic Mother, while teaching me how to sew on a button, told me I was gay.”
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“Years and years of pain, pressure of being the perfect Muslim child, anxiety and confusion, anger. All of it was calmed by one fateful night.”
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“The primary driver of us changing countries is to get married and be legally acknowledged as who we are.”
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“I was proudly out to my friends and endorsed LGBTQ+ rights outside the four walls of my home. However, inside those four walls, I was completely the opposite. I would never talk about sexuality, about me or my identity. I was still in the closet for my father and mother.”
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“I am exactly who I was always meant to be: A queer, bi-racial, HIV+ human.”
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“was placed in the psychiatric ward at Florida Hospital in Orlando. I couldn’t stop crying. All those feelings that I had bottled up for tens of years came rushing out all at once.”
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“Being a loud educated transgender woman as a lecturer I am well prepared mentally and physically that this will be a bumpy road for me.”
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“The many attempts to socially and racially eradicate me and then liking men – They constantly told me I was a problem – and that it should have been straight.”
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“Are we just here? sitting in the wind Do people see us? Do they even know we are here Screaming so loud.”
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“In my life, I have had two rebirths – at age 21 when I came out of the closet and at age 29 when I was diagnosed with HIV.”
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“I knew that I was on my 3rd strike with them. If I did anything else that they considered “gay,” I knew they’d kick me out.”
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“There is no one here to meet. At first, I thought there was, A name, a face, a tongue, a body”
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“It hurt to come home and not feel home. In the United States I feel like a stranger, but here? I feel like I don’t belong at all.”
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“I know i don’t have it even a fraction as bad as so many members of the lgbt+ community across the world, but it hurts just the same.”
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“No one tells you how complicated it is to go to a public bathroom, everyone looks at you, everyone talks about you, mocks you…”
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“After growing up in a rural conservative area where LGBT rights were seemingly nonexistent, I left and enlisted in the Army.”
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“im brown. im golden. im a child of the sun. a child of the rainbow.”
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“Being a gay Christian of a Pacific ethnicity was never easy. But in 2019, it got harder.”
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“Entering the dance world further amplified the racism, homophobia, transphobia, femmephobia, and body policing that I was already experiencing in the gay world. Who knew the dance world and Grindr would have so much in common?”
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“‘Gay’ did not exist in my small rural Michigan community. Only words like ‘queer’ or ‘faggot,’ with all their negative connotations.”
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“Sooner or later I’ll realize that I’m enough.
Sooner or later I’ll realize that the disrespect is too much.
Sooner or later I’ll say I’ve had enough.”
“I never really come out, because it’s too dangerous in my country. My country’s acceptance of homosexual is the lowest in the region.”
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“I tried my best to have a more accurate representation of myself in that country by wearing makeup and unisex clothing….but that had consequences.”
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“Free. I’m finally free. I don’t have to walk around and pretend anymore. I’m free.”
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“I have had joy and pain in my life but the most painful thing was having to live a lie, to hide the fact that I was gay. I still hide it for the most part as I live in a homophobic part of the world.”
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“Her death is a wound that is gone unhealed and 2 years and 14 days later we still have no justice, only heartbreak and memories.”
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“I’m on my own because I know what I do and don’t deserve. I deserve to be happy.”
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“My purpose by coming out to you today as a survivor of childhood sexual violence is to tell my story with the hope that no child in your life or mine ever experiences the sexual abuse that I and countless of other people in this world have experienced.”
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“I am the girl who likes boys. I am the girl who love girls as much as I can love a man.”
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“I DIDN’T KNEW I WAS GAY, BUT I LIKED BOYS, SO I WAS AN ABOMINATION.”
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“Just like the National Geographic photo encouraged a lot of trans people and let them feel like they could transition, video games did that for me.”
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“i don’t fit into the typical stereotypes of queer, i’m not super femm, i’m not butch, i’m not edgy or unique or anything like that”
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““My dear Richard was my neighbor, finding him, ‘He was the boy next door’ As our relationship truly blossomed to love”
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“Coming to terms with being gay as a child was pure hell.”
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“As a child who was bullied in Hong Kong and later as an immigrant in the USA, my roots were immersed in experiences of homophobia and xenophobia.”
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“My journey started with fear and others knowing my attraction was for boys, trying to change, trying to fit, ran away unable to accept who I was”
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“Since I had already experimented and enjoyed teenage sexual excursions with other boys, I knew that she was talking to me, and that was enough to put me in the closet.”
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“Being gay and HIV positive in Kenya is hell on earth. You get rejected by fellow queer men and society.”
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“Someone like me is always OK. Or at least that’s what I tell people.”
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“Now I am FREE, FREE TO BE MYSELF. I AM HAPPY!”
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“Married 20 years to a male, I had a child and 2 grandsons, I had no idea I was bisexual until I was divorced.”
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“The homophobic behaviors I have experienced in my life have been subtle and over, intentional and unintentional”
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“Growing up in rural Louisiana is unlike everything in the world – beauty beyond what I can describe. But the culture surrounding me was much different.”
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“There is love between Robert and I”
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“My eldest brother was my father figure, and so he took the responsibility of SCOLDING me, time and time again.”
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“At times the fight to be who I am now becoming was something that pushed me to the point of suicide. I thought that it was my only way out of the body I knew I didn’t belong in.”
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“I decided to forgive my parents for not accepting my sexualty. i forgive them, however, resent the christian faith because it robbed me of my parents.”
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“as a senior gay man not everything is sunshine, many clouds follow me around but thanks to the love and understanding of my parents, my family, and good friends I am able to survive attitudes and situations”
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“Despite all this I am smiling through the rain for I know there are so many LGBTQ young folks who look at me as their source of strength and inspiration.”
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