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LGBTQ+ Legislation in 2025: A Global Perspective

On President Donald Trump’s first day in office in January, he signed an executive order titled: “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” In it, he states that the United States will only recognize two male and female, and offers explicit guidance on what those terms mean (i.e., girls for females, and boys for males). He also promises to “defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.”

For the LGBTQ+ community, advocacy groups and individuals everywhere were preparing for Trump’s first moves against the transgender community in particular after his November win last year. According to the Pew Research Center, 78% of LGBTQ+ adults polled said that they expected a negative impact of his term on transgender people. The study then said that 71% of those polled expected a negative impact on gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals.

He had run on the ideology of “protecting women,” and his political party is following suit, swiftly trying to make their own moves in their respective states, regressing previous pro-LGBTQ+ laws and banning access to gender-affirming care, particularly for transgender youth in the country.

But the United States is not alone in this walkback across the globe.

According to the Equaldex, a worldwide LGBTQ+ legislation tracker, 43 legislative changes have happened in 2025 so far as of the beginning of May. The United States has dominated the LGBTQ+ bill space this year after Trump’s inauguration, enacting 13 changes in total– 11 that are regressing. One bill in particular, the transgender Department of Defense military ban, began then ended after a judge ruled against the legislation. Moves aren’t only being made federally, either. Another law in Iowa took gender identity off the list of protected classes against discrimination. Going into effect on July 1, this is just one example of the regression in the country.

LGBTQ+ advocacy

April 8, 2025

In Greece, blood donations by LGBTQ+ men, otherwise known as MSM’s (men who have sex with other men, as they are referred to in this type of legislation), have been banned once again. The legislation is overturning their decision just 3 years prior that allowed MSM’s to donate.

March 25, 2025

In Trinidad and Tobago, the country’s court reinstated laws that made homosexuality illegal. Imprisonment is punishment– a penalty of five years.

March 21, 2025

Italy also banned gender-neutral language in school.

These are just some of the ways countries have been choosing to handle LGBTQ+ issues as public opinion seems to regress, too.

According to a poll from Pew in February, Americans supporting legislation aimed at protecting transgender individuals from discrimination is down 8 points from 2022. But there are still gains overall for acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community. For example, another Pew poll showed that most of the countries that held surveys saw double-digit increases in support from 2002 to 2019.

And not all of the legislation being passed at the moment is negative. Liechtenstein and Thailand both legalized same-sex marriage in 2025. Australia and Mexico, in particular, are continuing to pass pro-LGBTQ+ legislation, too, advancing policies that the U.S. has walked back on recently, like recognizing non-binary as a gender.

Lucas Lixinski, a human rights lawyer who lives in Australia, said that social movements and their gains are “pendular.” “There is very clearly that sense of pendulum, especially when politics and whoever the government is, favors that,” Lixinski said. “Australia’s definitely not exempt from that.”

The country is seeing “pockets of potential backlash brewing,” he said. “I don’t want to sound too cynical, but it’s almost like conservative Australians are choosing to hate elsewhere,” Lixinski said.

However, other countries have taken note of Trump’s actions in the United States, from tariffs to rights of citizens. In Canada, for example, the conservative party lost plenty of steam after Trump’s inauguration, causing progressives to keep leadership of the country as the election “hinged on” who could best stand up to the U.S. president, according to NBC News.

Australia is just another example of conservatism losing support after the U.S. election. “There was a lot of preemptive mobilization in this area” from LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, according to Lixinski.

But that has now fizzled out after Trump’s antics during his first few months in office.

“Lucky for us, lucky for you,” Lixinski said.

This story began after I was looking into anti-transgender legislation in the U.S., and noticed this global shift. I created a cleaned dataset out of the Equaldex scraping I had done, and put it all together. I also looked at how things have been changing over the past few years just in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in general. You can find my work, alongside a more detailed explanation, at my github. Data sources for this project can be found at: https://github.com/amethystmart/lgbtq_regression