Mexico has more gay rights than the US

Although the US may boast a more vocal stance on supporting LGBT+ rights, leading experts say that the machismo culture found in the nation is negated by the wide separation between church and state.  “Common stereotypes of Mexico’s macho culture might lead us to expect that the legal landscape for gay rights in Mexico would be far less egalitarian than in the United States,” Caroline Beer and Victor Cruz Aceves wrote in a piece for LSE. “Yet there is no explicit constitutional protection for sexual orientation in the United States.” While Mexico decriminalized homosexuality in 1871, the US Supreme Court overturned anti-sodomy laws in 2003,. And although Mexico is a more religious nation, a national anti-discrimination law that included sexual orientation as a protected category was able to be carried out because of the distinction between church and state, says the report. However, the researchers say that opportunities for individuals to carry out unauthorized acts of violence is a risk in the country. “We should emphasize that in many ways the rule of law has not been effectively implemented in Mexico, and agents of the state use violence in ways that are not authorized by the law,” the experts wrote. “Individual state actors have used state violence against sexual minorities, often with impunity. While the law is not always effectively enforced in Mexico, the law does not allow for legal discrimination of sexual minorities.” Since President Donald Trump’s government voted to scrap Title IX protections, which protected the constitutional rights of trans pupils attending school, as well as banning transgender people from joining the military, LGBT+ people are seeing an erosion of their rights in the country. 61 percent of Mexicans think that society should accept homosexuality, while 60 percent of Americans believe this should be the case. Mexico has banned gay conversion therapy, while gay conversion therapy is still legal in 41 states in the US. The countries have been at odds ever since Trump announced that he wanted to build a wall between the States and Mexico during his presidential campaign in January 2015.