May 17: International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia
Hengaw: Saturday, May 17, 2025
May 17, the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), is not merely a symbolic occasion—it is a powerful global platform for confronting decades of discrimination, violence, and the systematic denial of fundamental human rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It serves as a reminder of the urgent need for solidarity, resistance, and collective action against oppressive laws and discriminatory structures.
In Iran, the queer community is not only denied basic rights but faces an ongoing threat to its very existence. LGBTQ+ people are subjected to arrest, torture, sexual violence, and severe criminal penalties—including flogging and execution—for same-sex relations, which remain criminalized under Iranian law. Trans people are further burdened by compulsory hijab laws, invasive state control over their bodies, and non-standardized, often dehumanizing, gender transition procedures, all of which deny them the right to gender self-determination.
Iranian trans people face systems that lack even the most basic legal and medical safeguards—systems that instead serve as tools of repression. Domestic violence, economic marginalization, lack of access to safe healthcare, and pervasive discrimination force many into precarious situations, including sex work as a means of survival. Even within opposition movements and civil society organizations, queer people frequently encounter exclusion and erasure. These challenges affect all those whose sexual orientation or gender identity deviates from dominant social norms.
Sexual and gender rights are integral to the broader struggle for human rights and social justice. Demanding these rights is not a personal or peripheral issue—it is a core measure of human rights progress in any society.
Hengaw Organization for Human Rights classifies the Islamic Republic of Iran as a gender apartheid state, citing its systemic discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, its enforcement of anti-queer ideology through legislation and state policy, and its structurally enforced gender segregation. In this state, not only are women excluded from public life, but LGBTQ+ people are rendered legally invisible, pathologized, and criminalized simply for existing.
On this International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia, Hengaw reaffirms a fundamental truth: sexual and gender diversity is an undeniable global reality. It must not only be acknowledged but actively protected through legal, social, and political means. The historic and ongoing harm inflicted on LGBTQ+ communities demands urgent, restorative, and empowering action.
