In Mumbai, at The Humsafar Trust, I met a gay man from the slums who told me through our interpreter that once he was outed by an ex-lover, he had no choice but to remain in the family dwelling exposed daily to the homophobia and violence from family members and neighbours. In my previous job at the World Bank covering Tunisia, I remember meeting young gay men from secondary cities who only had one dream: leaving for Europe. While in some urban areas in the Western part of the world, a visible generation of LGBT people has a shot at a life of dignity and opportunity, the others are faced with only two options: migration or despair. They increasingly are conscious that they too are born free and equal in dignity and rights and that nobody has the right to take it away from them. They too live in the global culture which produced “I love Simon ”, ”Girl”, “ Call me by your name”, “God’s own country” and “Transparent”. In a connected world, people who have same-sex attraction or non-conforming gender identity know that what stands between them and their right place in the humanity they belong to is bigotry and a plane ticket. The gap between the experience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the most tolerant places and that of those living in the rest of the globe has become unsustainable, creating a true urgency for global social change.
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