In the United States and western Europe the growing focus on liberal individual freedoms since the 1960s has opened social space for same-sex unions and affinities, which had long been suppressed by religious and cultural strictures. By the early 1970s a global gay rights movement championed the human rights of lesbian, gay, and transgendered people. The movement intensified in the 1980s as it became clear that governments neglected medical research and treatment for people sick with AIDS, which they dismissed as a “gay disease.” The organization ACT UP’s advocacy campaign for AIDS research created a powerful symbol using the words “Silence = Death” beneath a pink triangle to represent the AIDS crisis. A journalist who wrote about AIDS in the 1980s described his reaction to the ACT UP symbol:

When I first saw the [ACT UP] poster, I didn’t really know what it was. . . . I recognized the triangle as the symbol of homosexual victimization by the Nazis, but this triangle pointed up. Did it suggest supremacy? And the phrase itself, with its diabolical math, lodged in my imagination. Did it suggest conspiracy? Because of the word “death” I supposed it was about AIDS; had I noticed the tiny type at the bottom, which for a time included the instruction “Turn anger, fear, grief into action,” perhaps I would have been sure.5

By the 1990s gay rights activists had broadened their efforts to challenge discrimination in employment, education, and public life. In 1995 Canada became the first country to allow same-sex marriage. In the ensuing years many European countries followed suit. But the legalization of same-sex marriage was not only a Western achievement: by 2013 Argentina, South Africa, Ecuador, and Uruguay had legalized same-sex marriage, while many other nations provided legal protections for families that stopped shy of marriage. Argentina led the way in legal support for transgendered people and made sexual reassignment surgery a legal right in 2012.

The movement toward recognition of same-sex marriage reflects the connection between liberalization and human rights: beyond dignifying discriminated minorities, marriage rights give same-sex families legal equality to manage property rights and financial activities, such as the ability to inherit a home or jointly purchase insurance. Human rights successes in Latin America or Europe have widened the disparity in the experiences of lesbian, gay, or transgendered people in many other regions of the world. Parts of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia enforce religious strictures against same-sex relationships that include imprisonment or death.