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Dear John,

I’m holding two truths at once this year. We are making real progress, and the escalating backlash is already costing people their safety and dignity.

You were part of a global movement that made real progress in 2025. Thailand opened marriage to same-sex couples in January. Liechtenstein did as well. Saint Lucia struck down colonial criminalization of same-sex relations. Courts in Japan kept removing medical barriers to legal gender recognition. Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court recognized an X gender marker on birth certificates. South Korea’s census allowed same-sex couples to be counted for the first time. The UN Human Rights Council renewed the mandate that protects our communities. The Council of Europe set the first region-wide standard on intersex people’s rights.

In the same months, a coordinated rollback gathered speed. Burkina Faso criminalized same-sex intimacy. Trinidad and Tobago’s courts reinstated criminal penalties. Hungary wrote a rigid definition of sex into its constitution. Georgia erased gender identity from its equality law. The UK Supreme Court narrowed protections for trans women under the Equality Act. In the United States, federal orders and a Supreme Court decision opened the door to bans on care for trans youth while states added new restrictions in schools, health systems, and public life. Argentina blocked gender-affirming care for minors. Peru enacted a national bathroom law keyed to “biological sex.” Russia expanded prosecutions after branding an “International LGBT Movement” extremist.

The pattern is clear. Laws are being rewritten to lock sex and gender into a fixed binary. Health care is fenced off behind age limits, criminal penalties, and new layers of gatekeeping. Legal recognition is pushed back into courtrooms and medical boards. Censorship spreads through rules about family, decency, and propaganda. Intersex people are erased in many texts, while non-consensual surgeries on intersex children are still allowed. Sixty-five countries still criminalize same-sex intimacy. Only 38 recognize marriage equality. At least twenty-seven U.S. states now restrict some form of gender-affirming care for minors. These are not just numbers. They are empty chairs at dinner tables, clinics closed without warning, and IDs that out the person holding them.

There is also a funding crisis. Almost a year after the sudden end of U.S. foreign assistance, many frontline groups are quietly exhausting their remaining reserves. New funding is unlikely to come. Staff will not be paid, services will halt, and essential work will vanish, mostly out of sight. Movements can break under these pressures, but only if we let them.

Here is how we are responding in collaboration with our partners.
* We move flexible funds quickly so communities can meet urgent needs and keep organizing.
* We co-develop research and policy tools that judges, lawmakers, and UN bodies actually use.
* We open doors and step back so coalitions can lead.
* We sustain dedicated spaces for trans, intersex, and LBQ (lesbian, bi, and queer) organizing that are rooted in local capacity, not fly-in advocacy.

It is steady work that helps victories hold and keeps people safer when the news turns.

If you can, become a monthly supporter today. Reliable gifts create the stability needed to plan, hire, and keep work moving between crises. They turn solidarity into staying power.
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If you already give monthly, thank you.

Together, forward. We are not done yet.

With resolve,
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Maria Sjödin (they/she)

Executive Director

Outright International



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