282 articles
House of Xtravaganza
House of Xtravaganza (formerly Extravaganza), a New York ballroom house founded in 1982 by Hector Valle and Angie Xtravaganza as the first all-Latinx house, featured in Paris Is Burning and tied to Madonna's Vogue.
Human Rights Campaign
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), founded as the Human Rights Campaign Fund in 1980 by Stephen Endean, is a leading US LGBTQ+ political advocacy organization, known for the Corporate Equality Index and Equality Voter mobilization.
ILGA-Europe
ILGA-Europe: Brussels-based LGBTI umbrella NGO of 700+ organisations in 54 countries, region of ILGA since 1996; publishes the annual Rainbow Map ranking 49 countries on LGBTI laws and policies.
Immigration effects of same-sex relationships
The immigration effects of same-sex relationships cover how binational LGBT couples obtain residency through partner sponsorship or asylum, a US pathway barred by DOMA until the Supreme Court struck it down in 2013.
Institut für Sexualwissenschaft
Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, Magnus Hirschfeld's 1919 Berlin institute, the world's first sexology research and clinic center; performed early gender-affirming surgeries, destroyed by Nazi students in May 1933.
International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association
ILGA World (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association), founded 1978 in Coventry, is a federation of 2,000+ LGBTI organisations in 170+ countries with UN ECOSOC status; its ILGA-Europe branch publishes the Rainbow Map.
International Transgender Day of Visibility
International Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV), held annually on March 31, was founded in 2009 by Rachel Crandall-Crocker of Transgender Michigan as a worldwide celebration of living transgender people, contrasting with the November 20 Transgender Day of Remembrance.
Intersex
Intersex describes people born with sex characteristics, including chromosomes, gonads, hormones and genitals, that do not fit typical binary definitions of male or female bodies; also called variations in sex characteristics or DSD, with growing legal protections against non-consensual surgery.
Jazz Jennings
Jazz Jennings is an American transgender activist, author, and reality TV star of TLC's I Am Jazz (2015- ). Known for a 2007 Barbara Walters interview at age six, early transition, memoir Being Jazz, and Harvard studies.
Kathoey
Kathoey (กะเทย) is a Thai term for people assigned male at birth with feminine gender identity or expression, traditionally a third sex; alternatives include sao praphet song and phuuying kham phet.
Katy Faust
Katy Faust, American conservative activist against same-sex marriage; founder and president of Them Before Us (2018) and spokeswoman for the Greater Than campaign; author of Them Before Us (2021), framing marriage as children's rights.
Killing of Brianna Ghey
Murder of Brianna Ghey, 16-year-old transgender girl stabbed 28 times in Culcheth Linear Park, Warrington, on 11 February 2023 by Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe, jailed for minimum 22 and 20 years.
Killing of Charlie Howard
The killing of Charlie Howard was the July 7, 1984 anti-gay murder of a 23-year-old man thrown from Bangor, Maine's State Street bridge into the Kenduskeag Stream by three teenagers later convicted of manslaughter; it galvanized Maine LGBTQ+ rights organizing and EqualityMaine.
Kim Davis
Kim Davis, former Rowan County, Kentucky clerk, refused same-sex marriage licenses after Obergefell (2015), was jailed for contempt, lost a $360,000 damages judgment, and was denied Supreme Court review in 2020 and 2025.
Kinsey scale
The Kinsey scale, or Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale, is a 0-to-6 continuum plus X created by Alfred Kinsey's team, first published in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948), rating sexual orientation from interview histories rather than any official test.
Ladies of Llangollen
Ladies of Llangollen: Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, Anglo-Irish women who eloped in 1778 and lived together nearly fifty years at Plas Newydd, Wales, as a celebrated same-sex couple.
Lana Tisdel
Lana Tisdel, Falls City, Nebraska woman, girlfriend of Brandon Teena; dated him December 1993, testified at John Lotter's murder trial, and settled a lawsuit over her portrayal in Boys Don't Cry.
Laxmi Narayan Tripathi (लक्ष्मी नारायण त्रिपाठी)
Laxmi Narayan Tripathi (लक्ष्मी नारायण त्रिपाठी) is an Indian transgender activist, Bharatanatyam dancer, author, and Kinnar Akhara acharya mahamandaleshwar; first transgender Asia-Pacific UN representative (2008) and NALSA third-gender petitioner.
Leelah Alcorn
Leelah Alcorn, born Joshua Ryan Alcorn, was an American transgender teenager from Kings Mills, Ohio, whose December 2014 suicide and Tumblr note sparked international outcry, the Leelah's Law petition, and US movement against conversion therapy.
Legal recognition of non-binary gender
Legal recognition of non-binary gender: state acknowledgment of genders beyond male/female via markers like X, diverse, or third gender. Nepal (2007), India NALSA (2014), Germany (2018), Argentina recognize it; the UK and, since 2025, US passports do not.
Lesbian
Lesbian: a woman with enduring sexual or romantic attraction to women; defined across identity, attraction, and behavior; prevalence, health, and legal context worldwide.
Lesbian bed death
Lesbian bed death is a 1980s-popularized term for a supposed decline of sex in long-term lesbian relationships, rooted in Blumstein and Schwartz's American Couples study and since qualified by matched-comparison and desire-discrepancy research.
Lesbian erasure
Lesbian erasure is the denial or omission of lesbian identity, culture, and same-sex attraction in academia, media, healthcare, and data, related to bi-erasure and heterosexism erasure, documented since 1994 scholarship.
Lesbian sexual practices
Lesbian sexual practices: sexual behaviors between women, including oral sex, digital penetration, mutual masturbation, and intercrural sex. Covers prevalence, STI transmission risk, safer sex methods, orgasm research, and screening disparities versus heterosexual women.
Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners
Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), a London lesbian and gay activist group founded July 1984 during the 1984–85 UK miners' strike, raised about £20,000 for the Dulais valley mining community in South Wales and helped win NUM backing for lesbian and gay rights.
Leslie Feinberg
Leslie Feinberg (1949–2014), who used zie/hir pronouns, was an American butch lesbian, transgender activist, author, and communist, author of Stone Butch Blues (1993) and Transgender Warriors (1996).
LGBT parenting
LGBT parenting: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people raising children as parents or foster parents. Meta-analyses find child outcomes comparable to heterosexual-parent families; family relationship quality, not orientation, predicts adjustment, with ongoing methodological and legal debates.
LGBT rights opposition
LGBT rights opposition: organized resistance by Christian Right movements, anti-gender networks, and states to LGBTI rights, via criminalization, religious freedom laws, propaganda censorship, and ballot campaigns; 60 UN states criminalize same-sex acts.
LGBT-free zone
LGBT-free zones (Strefa wolna od LGBT) were Polish municipalities, counties, and provinces that declared themselves free of "LGBT ideology" from 2019; non-binding resolutions covering about a third of Poland, repealed by 2025 after court challenges and EU funding pressure.
LGBT-free zones
LGBT-free zones were declarations by Polish municipalities, counties, and regions, adopted mainly between 2019 and 2021, rejecting "LGBT ideology"; at their peak they covered a third of Poland.