UK drops in LGBTQ+ rights ranking

Britain dropped in an annual ranking of European countries’ LGBTQ+ rights yesterday, with activists citing the exclusion of transgender people from an upcoming ban on conversion therapy.

Britain fell from 10th to 14th place in the “Rainbow Europe” index by advocacy group ILGA-Europe, continuing its slide from No 1 spot seven years ago.

The government’s policy on conversion therapy, which aims to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, its stance on gender recognition, and barriers to asylum for LGBTQ+ people were all cited as factors.

“The UK is moving backwards,” Evelyne Paradis, ILGAEurope’s executive director told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Britain topped the Rainbow Europe Map in 2015, but since then, activists said the government had failed to deliver on several pieces of long-awaited LGBTQ+ legislation.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced criticism last month for dropping a blanket ban on conversion therapy.

The new law will bar efforts to change the sexuality of gay and bisexual people, but it will not cover trans conversion therapy or adults who are deemed to have consented.

Proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act to allow trans people to legally change gender without a medical diagnosis were also mooted in 2017, but scrapped in 2020.

A spokesperson for the Equality Hub, a government body that oversees equality laws, defended the government’s track record, saying Britain had one of the world’s “most comprehensive and robust legislative protection frameworks for LGBT people”.

Paradis said a “toxic” climate had developed in Britain as a result of an “anti-trans narrative and rhetoric and mobilisation” in British media and society.

Britain’s four-place fall the largest percentage drop of any country listed now places the country behind France, the Netherlands and Iceland.

It also ranks below Montenegro, despite the Balkan nation’s lack of legal recognition for same-sex marriage.

Malta has topped the index since 2016 when it became the first European country to criminalise conversion therapy.

Poland is the lowest-ranked country within the EU.