The gay-dating app Scruff began issuing gay travel advisories to users five years ago after the company’s management noticed how frequently people were using the app to research potential travel destinations, Scruff CEO Eric Silverberg said. And North Carolina faced corporate backlash in which many companies said they would limit travel to the state after its lawmakers passed a controversial “bathroom bill” that required transgender people to use restrooms corresponding to the sex on their original birth certificates.Īnd anti-LGBTQ laws and sentiment are not dwindling. Some called for a boycott of Bermuda after the island territory introduced a ban on same-sex marriages. Other places have faced travel boycotts in the wake of anti-LGBTQ laws. Russia, for instance, famously passed a law that banned “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations,” despite the fact that homosexuality is legal there. “The homophobia and transphobia you find out in the world is different depending on where you are.” “When you look at the protections on the map, Brazil has broad protections, but they still have the highest transgender murder rate in the world,” Salvato said. “‘Brazil has broad protections, but they still have the highest transgender murder rate in the world.’ ” -Ed Salvato, editor-in-chief of travel website ManAboutWorld They’re obviously not on people’s list of summer travel destinations, but even countries where homosexuality is legal, discrimination against LGBTQ people may not be illegal. Read more: This is the biggest financial concern among LGBTQ Americansīrunei isn’t the only country where the punishment for homosexuality is death - Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran and Mauritania also allow for the death penalty in these instances. Other countries have laws criminalizing homosexuality on the books, but do not enforce them. In some countries, only homosexual activities between men is illegal.
Homosexual activity is illegal to some extent in 71 countries, according to Equaldex, a crowdsourced site that tracks legal protections afforded to the LGBTQ community. “But multiple countries have the death penalty on the books as a penalty for LGBT people.” Brunei is far from the only country with anti-LGBTQ laws in place “Brunei made such a splash because it’s so barbaric and medieval,” said Ed Salvato, editor-in-chief of travel website ManAboutWorld and an LGBTQ travel expert.
While Brunei is not the only place where experts say it’s not safe to be a member of the LGBTQ community. Has banned reviews of the hotels in the wake of the backlash. Travel agencies and airlines have also ended partnerships with the state-owned Royal Brunei Airlines. Since then, eight of the hotels have deleted some or all of their social media accounts, while another has made its profiles private.