Until 1990, if you were gay, the World Health Organization had a name for you, and it was a disease. On May 17 of that year, doctors from all over the world finally changed their minds. Today May 17 is the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, and it’s a good day to look at where the world stands.
The day we stopped being sick
For most of the twentieth century, medicine treated homosexuality as a mental illness. Gay men were locked up in hospitals, given electric shocks, hormones, “cures” of every kind. On May 17, 1990, the World Health Assembly approved a new international list of diseases, and homosexuality was no longer on it. It sounds like paperwork. For millions of people, it was the end of being told there was something wrong with them.
A day against hate
In 2004 a French activist, Louis-Georges Tin, proposed turning that date into a day against homophobia. The first one was held on May 17, 2005. Transphobia was added in 2009 and biphobia in 2015, which is where the long name comes from. Today it is marked in more than 150 countries, including some where simply taking part can get you arrested.
Where it is still a crime
As of 2026, 65 countries in the United Nations still treat sex between two consenting adults of the same sex as a crime. In seven of them, the law allows the death penalty: Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Uganda, Yemen and the northern states of Nigeria. In five more, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar, Somalia and the United Arab Emirates, it is not clear that it doesn’t.
Forwards and backwards
The good news: in recent years India, Botswana, Singapore, Namibia and a string of Caribbean islands have scrapped their old laws, and two men can now marry in 37 countries plus Taiwan. The bad news: for the first time in almost ten years, the number of countries that criminalize us has gone up. Uganda, Russia, Iraq, Mali and Burkina Faso have all made life harder for gay people, and in Hungary the government banned Pride.
Rights move in both directions. That’s why people keep marching.
From then to now
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1990
Not a disease
On May 17 the World Health Organization adopts a new list of diseases without homosexuality.
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2005
The first May 17
The International Day Against Homophobia is celebrated for the first time. Transphobia is added in 2009, biphobia in 2015.
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2018
India
The Supreme Court strikes down the colonial law against gay sex.
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2019
Botswana
A court decriminalizes gay sex. The same year the WHO stops treating trans people as mentally ill.
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2022
Singapore
Parliament repeals the law that made sex between men a crime.
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2023
Uganda and Russia
Uganda brings in the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”. Russia’s Supreme Court declares the “LGBT movement” extremist.
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2024
Two steps back, one forward
Iraq punishes gay relationships with up to 15 years in prison, and Mali criminalizes them for the first time in its history. In Namibia, a court strikes down the old law.
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2025
Still moving
Saint Lucia decriminalizes. Burkina Faso and Trinidad and Tobago go the other way.
Why it matters
If you can open a site like this one without being afraid, you are one of the lucky ones. Plenty of men visiting it tonight are doing so in a country where getting caught could cost them their job, their freedom or worse.
On May 17, spare them a thought. And if you live somewhere free, remember that freedom is not a given: it was won, and it can be lost.
