Cross-National Data Projects

While researching transnational LGBTI advocacy, I have come across several data limitations. Due to the relative infancy of transnational LGBTI movements and continued marginalization of these populations, access to high quality data is limited. Consequently, I have been in the process of four large-scale data collection projects in the hopes of providing fellow researchers and LGBTI activists with data that can provide new insights. Also, this lack of LGBTI data is also being addressed in a new initiative by the World Bank. Below is a brief description of the various data collection initiatives I am working on (with assistance from others), all of which are still on-going. If you are interested in knowing more about any of these projects or how to access data, please email me.

LGBTI Policy Adoption and Implementation

Today, several organizations and outlets report on the implementation of a variety of LGBTI policies. For example, the International Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association publishes the State Sponsored Homophobia Report each year which documents that adoption of several policies. They’ve also recently released the Trans Legal Mapping Report. Transgender Europe also has an extensive project outlining trans policies in roughly 190 countries.

Although these various outlets report on the status of various policies, less is known about their degree of implementation. For example, even though same-sex sexual acts may be criminalized in a country, how often (if ever) is this policy enforced? Alternatively, if a country has a ban on LGBTI employment discrimination, how often do these practices still take place? While adoption itself is important, it alone does not tell the full story of the policies governing LGBTI lives. Knowing the extent to which policies are implemented is also a critical piece of information. Therefore, I have been working on an original dataset that combines several data sources together to understand both the adoption and implementation of the following policies in each country:

  1. Criminalization of same-sex sexual acts

  2. Equal age consent between same-sex and opposite-sex partners

  3. Hate crime protections

  4. Civil unions/domestic partnerships

  5. Same-sex marriages

  6. Joint adoption for same-sex partners

  7. Legal name and gender changes

  8. Prohibition of employment discrimination based on gender identity and/or sexual orientation

  9. Ban on ‘conversation therapies’

  10. ‘Propaganda laws’ (like the one adopted in Russia in 2013)

 

Global LGBTQ+ Domestic NGO Database

Presently, there is no database or easily-accessible collection of domestic LGBTI organizations in each country. Similar to LGBTI policies, there are multiple outlets that have some information on these organizations but nothing comprehensive. For example, the It Gets Better Project has amassed a set of over 1,000 organizations across 40+ countries that help queer youth. Equaldex also has information on some LGBTI organizations operating in several countries in addition to information on LGBTI policies. Over the last three years, I have been working with Tara Gonsalves on creating a comprehensive database of domestic LGBTI organizations in each country by pulling information from dozens of data sources. To date, this database has over 12,000 organizations and includes the following information: name of organization, founding date, mission statement, international affiliations, and, when possible, when the organization ceased operations.

 

LGBTI Discourse and Visibility

As with most social movements, a common goal for LGBTI movements is to increase visibility and issue awareness. Typically, measuring or getting a sense of this visibility is a difficult task. Working with Perry Gowdy, we have developed tools in Python and C++ to systematically retrieve all newspaper articles from LexisNexis and Factiva that discuss LGBTI communities. Using a core group of 20 key terms that encompass multiple dimensions of LGBTI communities (‘homosexuality’, ‘lesbian’, ‘gender identity’, etc.), we collect every article that includes one of the key terms in the highest circulating newspaper for all years available. Additionally, we have translated this set of key terms to over 15 languages using information from LGBTI activists that operate in the respective language (rather than simply using an automated translation service). Therefore, in addition to a mass dataset of over 200,000 LGBTI-related newspaper articles, we have also built a novel dictionary of important LGBTI terminology spanning multiple languages and contexts. With this new dataset, we can now utilize text analysis to discover how LGBTI communities are conceptualized and discussed in more than 140 countries around the world from 1977-2017.

 

Transnational Anti-LGBTI Networks

While headlines in recent years have typically been focused on the progress LGBTI movements are making, especially through the adoption of same-sex marriage rights, more and more instances of backlash continue to arise. For example, in the United States, President Donald Trump has sought to ban transgender individuals from joining the U.S. military and has started to deny visas to same-sex partners of U.N. diplomats. To understand why and where these cases of backlash and resistance toward LGBTI equality are taking place, I have developed a new dataset of anti-LGBTI networks as part of my dissertation research.

The World Congress of Families is perhaps the largest international actor promoting anti-LGBT policies in the name of ‘protecting the family.’ WCF hosts international conferences that bring together state actors, civil society organizations, and religious institutions to coordinate and push back against LGBTI rights. By looking through conference programs and funding sources, I have collected a database of over 6,000 organizations around the world that actively participate in this emerging counter movement — one that is has increased its transnational coordination since 2008. In forthcoming projects, I map out these networks to understand who key actors are and which institutions are helping to fund their efforts (hint: Russia and the United States).