America scores a "C" on global LGBTQ+ rights scorecard

Thanks to the relentless anti-LGBTQ+ campaign of the GOP, the US is plummeting in global rankings of human rights

In an unsurprising turn of events for anyone who has been paying attention to the Republican Party’s relentless anti-LGBTQ+ campaign of the past year, the USA ranked 31st out of 136 nations, well below Canada, Australia, Uruguay, Luxembourg, Brazil, Norway, Colombia, Malta and Chile, which are the countries that best uphold the human rights of their LGBTQ+ citizens, according to the Franklin & Marshall Global Barometers Report (PDF) released last week. 

The annual study delves into a country’s policies and as well as persecution climate based on the lived realities of more than 167,000 queer people surveyed worldwide. It gave more than half of the world — 62 percent — an F grade.

The United States is clearly destined to fall in ranking over the coming months and year as more and more states enact dystopian anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ laws in their states, despite many of those laws being struck down by courts as being unconstitutional.

“You’ll probably see a lot lower grades because if one state violates one of the items that we’re looking at, the whole country gets to zero, so there’ll be a downgrade for the United States,” said Susan Dicklitch-Nelson, professor of government at Franklin & Marshall College and the study’s founder.

The fact that a supposed “free” nation is coming down so hard upon people who simply wish to live authentically is a serious indictment against those who are creating so many restrictions and laws banning gender-affirming care, those banning thousands of books that they deem “pornographic” or “inappropriate for children” simply because they happen to have LGBTQ+ characters or talk about slavery being a bad thing, or those who wish to turn this country into a right wing Christian theocracy.

Free nations do not think and act this way. And as LGBTQ+ people become less free, everybody suffers in the end.