Show HN: I made a site that helps you find LGBT+ Travel Rankings and Gay Laws | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I made a site that helps you find LGBT+ Travel Rankings and Gay Laws

visalist.io

186 points1hakr116 comments

Personally I'd like to see more information and transparency about how the ratings are calculated and where the data is coming from for me to put faith in the website and methodology, since that's the whole premise.

For example what does X% discrimination or persecution actually mean? How is that quantified and why is it a percentage?

Edit: another thing that doesn't give me confidence in the website are the frequent spelling errors, this is copy and pasted from the Netherlands description and there is a mistake in almost every sentence.

> Netherlands is part of Europe with main city at Amsterdam. Its Developed country with a population of 17M people. The main currency is Euro. The languages spoken are Dutch. the Kingdom of the Netherlands is the formal name of Netherlands It is adviced to Exercise normal safety precautions

I got the actual data from https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay-travel-... I just made it a percent to make it easy to compare and understand.

I would argue it doesn't make it easier to understand though, plus I'm sure there is a mistake in your methodology. E.g. several countries you score as 67% in equal age of consent when they have laws specifying this. What is a 100% then? Moreover the guide you posted gives a max rating of 1 in this category, therefore that's why I think you made a mistake mapping their scores to percentages.

Thanks, another user pointed it out and I fixed. Currently, the ranges are -3 to 3 for each category but for some, it's only 0 to -3 and accordingly I changed it.

You've got some bugs in the processing. For instance, at least Belgium & the Netherlands have equal age of consent.

Yes its present and has the same score for both the countries

This map is terribly wrong for some parts of the ex-USSR and Asia.

Coming out as a gay person in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan or Azerbaijan is dangerous. Dangerous as in "there is a high chance you'll be beaten up and a mild chance of being kidnapped and killed".

From the other side, Russia is not that bad. Not bad means "you can see gay people kissing on the streets without repercussions" (in the European part of the country).

Syria? Oman? Just no comments.

> you can see gay people kissing on the streets without repercussions

I never say gay people kissing (or even holding hands) even in Moscow.

Maybe Russia is not as bad as Syria, but that statement is not true.

YMMV, but check Google Maps to see how many gay bars are there in Moscow.

Yeah, but none of them is openly gay. For example, they can't practically display a rainbow flag near the entrance. These are "underground" bars and clubs.

As underground as one can be on Google maps.

I believe Spartacus is a very reputable site for the gay community and this data is based on that https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay-travel-...

I was looking for a way to check a website where I can find Gay-friendly countries when one of my friends asked me as I have built the Visa List. Surprisingly I found very few blogs and they had very few countries and didn't tell me how safe every country is. So I decided to build a full functionality where you can find each and every country with their travel ranking with their civil rights, discrimination, and persecution against gay people. You can sort by most and least friendly and visualize it on a map.

I would love to get feedback and improve the travel experience for LGBT+ community.

I like the design and intent, but I'm not sure mapping the scores to percentages works. I can't see how the UK's equal age of consent [since 2000] works out at '67%' for example.

I'm also pretty sceptical of the underlying data anyway: I'm also perplexed by the idea that the UK has a significant negative religious influence, and I'm pretty sure Pride is banned in Saudi Arabia

The Church of England just said that sex is for married hetero-sexual couples only.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-51233003

It also said sorry for offending people very quickly afterwards, and more to the point has tiny and declining attendance and minimal impact on attitudes towards homosexual tourists. The idea that it's more hostile and influential on the subject of homosexuality than, say, the Catholic church in most Catholic majority countries doesn't really stack up.

It's the official state religion and is represented in the house of lords. That's real actual power, albeit moderated by the rest of the HoL. And, while they apologised, they stuck by that announcement.

We also have Catholic churches here, who've made similar pronouncements about relationships of gay people.

We've had a long running demonstration outside primary schools by Muslim people complaining about age appropriate lessons about relationships.

A transwoman was ostracized by her orthodox Jewish community to the point where she was unable to see her children. Despite winning the various court cases she's now given up trying to have contact with her children.

Religious intolerance of LGBTQ relationships is widespread in the UK across most religions.

Nobody is saying that religious prejudice in the UK is nonexistent. What I am saying is the data source's conclusion that the UK has a high level of religious prejudice not found in the rest of Western Europe is palpably absurd.

'But I have to worry about the power of bishops in the House of Lords', said no tourist ever.

Are you ignoring Northern Ireland?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Northern_Irelan...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Unionist_Party#Soci...

EDIT: Also, it's weird to discount the fact that about one third of all schools in England are faith schools - most of those are either Church of England or Catholic. Ofsted requires schools to teach about same sex relationships, but Ofsted doesn't prevent schools from teaching that these relationships are sinful. https://www.secularism.org.uk/opinion/2019/07/faith-schools-...

> Despite winning the various court cases she's now given up trying to have contact with her children.

Wait, what? Do you have a source for this? Because if it is true it is outrageous.

looks okay, but this site is very slow for me. takes seconds to scroll... i have the feeling it could be faster.

Yeah on my Macbook Pro scrolling is a little janky too, but it's not that noticeable. Probably that map at the top right, or the big ad on the right?

This is such an awesome project! Kudos

Thanks mate! Do share if you found this useful!!

As a gay man, you're safer and better off in Singapore than you would be in most parts of Europe and the top portion of the list. Yet Singapore is down at 92.

Interpret this however you want, but the list flawed. Laws don't mean shit unless they're enforced and that goes both ways. "Bad" laws not enforced is better than good laws not enforced.

Yes and no. On the one hand a gay tourist is considerably less likely to be on the receiving end of homophobic beatings in Singapore than many liberal European countries, and won't have any issue finding the gay scene. On the other hand its a country where only a fifth of the population think gay sex isn't wrong and the unenforced law against gay sex still has majority public support.

> On the other hand its a country where only a fifth of the population think gay sex isn't wrong and the unenforced law against gay sex still has majority public support.

So? Aren't people entitled to their own views and opinions.

I guess in some sense bigotry is legally allowed, but it is pretty relevant for someone looking for a place where they'd be accepted and fit in.

Thanks for the feedback mate. I got this data from Spartacus website. Do you think it's not accurate? What about all the other countries?

https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay-travel-...

Fucking hell, your defense against all the criticism is that "Oh it's data from some 3rd party!", which is more or less saying "not my fault!".

As another has said, this is less than useless, this is dangerous. And if it's the source that's wrong, then the source is also dangerous, but you're spreading dangerously wrong information. I hope no LGBT+ person actually depends on your site, because it might get them fucking killed.

Besides, having the info be country-wide is not granular enough. A gay traveller would probably feel very safe in San Francisco but not feel very safe in some little town deep in Alabama.

I'm a straight male and I feel uncomfortable in parts of TN, WV, AL, GA. I go there to see family and I don't like it. I feel like some of these folks don't just dislike LGBT, they dislike everyone. Downtown Seattle at 4am in cracktown is safer, then small town WV as an outsider.

Edited for spelling

that guide has such a bad reputation for a lot of queer people. the rating isn't a bad rough guide, but it is outright dangerous as a resource to people who are especially trans and gender nonconforming, and queer people traveling with their kids.

if you make it clear that that's your source that's fine, but.... it needs to be more clear.

Poland scores much higher than South Korea.

Poland has areas which have declared themselves LGBT-free zones. South Korea is higher on the Human Development Index but is described as "developing".

This is just nonsense, isn't it?

As gay person living in Warsaw I wouldn't move to South Korea. They have some serious legal problems like very limited or not existing anti-discrimination laws in employment, no right to serve openly in the military etc. Poland has openly gay politicians, party leaders and mayors - I don't think is true in South Korea. Also look at the comment below regarding Israel also featuring high in the ranking despite having serious problems outside Tel Aviv (a nice city BTW).

Also so called LGBT-free zones are limited to south eastern Poland (ultra-catholic, conservative, something like bible belt in the US) - however stupid they are they are only declarative.

LGBT-free zones are places free of LGBT ideology and not LGBT people. Totally different meaning.

> Totally different meaning.

If people aren't allowed to express who they are or their beliefs for fear of literally being bricked or kicked in the face [0][1] then you're banning LGBT people (and obviously "LGBT ideology" too).

[0] https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/07/bigots-attacks-pride-mar...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-l67aCX0vA

I agree with you that if you ban LGBT people your are also probably banning LGBT ideology. But banning LGBT ideology does not mean banning LGBT people. Being a LGBT person does not mean that you automatically subscribe to an LGBT ideology.

This sounds awfully like "as long as you don't do anything visible you can be LGBT", with "LGBT ideology" being things like "you should be allowed to be recognizably LGBT in public", "you should be allowed to talk about being LGBT", ...

At least that's how it usually goes when this argument comes out.

I agree. This strikes me as a Motte-and-bailey attitude towards LGBT acceptance in society.

Please don't ascribe ulterior meanings to my words. What I wrote was pretty unambiguous and what you wrote does not follow from my comment.

The former is obvious, no place is LGBT free by fiat. Just more repressive.

How do I determine what is “ideology” and what isn’t? If a person is LGBT, is their behaviour considered ideology? When does something simply being LGBT also become ideology?

I will try with an analogy, please don't take it literally. Communist party (the ideology) stipulates that it represents workers (people) and that every worker is inherently on its side. But being a worker in reality does not mean one is a communist and banning the communist party does not mean banning the workers.

I feel like you are trying to paint a neat, ethical line where none exists.

I think I understand your analogy. An individual LGBT person might not feel represented by elements of LGBT activism in the same way a worker might not about communism. I'm having trouble extrapolating that to what is/isn't ideology though. Could you explain a little more?

For example, imagine that two people of the same sex meet in university. They start dating and eventually move in together after a year or two. Fast forward and they've been cohabiting for a decade. They share bills and go out to dinner and bicker about whose turn it is to do the laundry. Would labelling them as a couple be considered LGBT ideology? How about considering them common-law?

It strikes me that "LGBT ideology" is a label you get to put on behaviours or traits when you decide you don't like them; otherwise it's "simply LGBT". I think I need more reasoning whether something shouldn't be allowed or not.

I really don't think the vast majority of people in western societies are bothered by two same sex people living together in a relationship. That is not what the term LGBT ideology encompasses. The ideology part is about having a set of ideas that are not allowed to be challenged and spreading those ideas with zealotry and force on to others. Things like forced pronouns, harassing doctors for not wanting to mutilating kids who are not even in puberty, men using women's toilets, man competing against women in sports,..., while being very nasty towards people who disagree with those ideas.

> men using women's toilets, man competing against women in sports

No, not really. More like, transgender women using women's toilets and transgender women competing against cisgender women in sports. I do not think that any lgbt activist is petitioning to let actual men in women's toilets (although I do not really see what the issue is. My mother multiple times used the men's toilets because she found them to be cleaner and nobody was annoyed with that. As for women in sports, it depends if you want to find the world's best footballer or the world's best female footballer - the first should have people regardless of gender compete in it, the second should only have women. In the same spirit there could be a competition for cisgender women only)

> For example, imagine that two people of the same sex meet in university. They start dating and eventually move in together after a year or two. Fast forward and they've been cohabiting for a decade. They share bills and go out to dinner and bicker about whose turn it is to do the laundry. Would labelling them as a couple be considered LGBT ideology?

You mean, like, roommates? It depends what you mean by 'a couple', obviously. People who live together are not necessarily involved in any kind of intimate relationship. What if it was three people who just hang out informally for a while ("date") and then move in together to share their rent/bills/chores?

Sorry if my wording was confusing; when I wrote "They start dating" I meant to imply a romantic relationship and not friends or roommates.

I didn't mean to conflate the two, but my writing was meant to ask the earlier commenter to label or identify what they thought of the behaviours mentioned. That's a mark on my writing if the reader inferred the scenario as roommates.

The point is that by restricting your scenario to "a romantic relationship and not friends or roommates", you're already going way beyond the identification of 'behaviors', and deep into what some people might call ideology. Unless you specifically look at what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms, the behaviors involved in "dating" vs. "hanging out" are pretty much indistinguishable. And LGBT+ folks are very much a minority, so "roommates" is going to be the typical case by a large margin.

Consider kissing or holding hands in public. Would said people be banned in these areas? Would this be considered an ideology?

So many fake data on this, ok let's take Algeria as example of course it's not place for gay people but i'm questioning the data let's start by Death Sentence Algeria doesn't have death sentence at all and in this it tell you they will execute gay people well bullshit, and being gay is not illegal but not socially accepted big difference, pride is definitely banned but it tell you is not,Religious Influence is 67% well no way it's 100% etc.

Love the idea. Terrible execution. Here's some constructive criticism:

The site currently is as useless as listing the average elevation of countries to determine where mountains and valleys exist. Utterly useless.

Texas would be one of the largest and most populous countries in the world if it was a country. Yet it is grouped together with states that couldn't be more different. Even WITHIN Texas LGBT acceptance in Austin TX and El Paso TX couldn't be more different.

What would actually be useful?

A heat-map style visual of the world; granular to the level of regions with 200k+ people.

P.s. Make data source contribution a moderated community effort. Do not rely on terribly non-granular data sources constructed by people who don't actually live in the regions you're providing information about.

There's a bunch of variance of acceptance depending on where exactly you are in the LGBTP+ spectrum, no? For that reason alone it seems like you'd need more granularity on the details.

Not sure about the accuracy. France says locals hostile at 33% while Russia only has locals hostile at 17% and locals hostile at 0% in Singapore...Oh and locals hostile at 17% in Saudi Arabia!!!

I'd say those numbers are totally wrong. This is the kind of project where hacking a quick solution together could lead to bad consequences so care should be taken with the numbers you give.

I wonder if this is because of how you convert to percentages? I haven't looked yet at the data in spartacus.

Also it is true that there's a difference between gay tourists who are less likely to be bothered in certain religious countries compared to residents.

The source data [1] shows Saudi Arabia as -2 on a scale of 0 to -2 for locals hostile. They also note "Some of the most dangerous countries for LGBT travelers in 2019 include again Saudi Arabia, Iran, Somalia and the Chechen Republic in Russia, where homosexuals are widely persecuted and threatened with death." [2] so maybe there's a second source being used or there's a data conversion issue.

[1] https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/gaytravelindex-2019.pdf

[2] https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/gay-travel-index-2019...

Yes the discrimination and persecution and negative scores in percentages with colors as orange and red.

Come again? This is pretty much word salad.

In the source data, Saudi Arabia is scored as a -2 for locals hostile and France only -1. The percentage is 17% and 33%, respectively. Why is this?

The conversion to percentages doesn't make any sense.

If the score range were -3 to 3:

But I suspect the real range is 0, -1, -2 and would make more sense inverted. Canada 0%, France 50%, Saudi 100%.

"The strength of the religious influence and general homophobia in society will be assessed with up to -2 points, since the quality of life you can massively restrict homosexual."

https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/gaytravelindex_2017.pdf

Thanks for the feedback. I will fix it based on your suggestions.

Yeah, move fast and break things works great with novelty pens, not so much with smoke detectors.

OP, if you're not going to take the quality of information very seriously, you should probably pivot to something a bit less hazardous.

Thanks for the suggestion. I built it as there was no such tool to look up any countries gay travel laws.

Here ya go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_terr...

That doesn't address their criticism though. Many people here have pointed out these mistakes on your site. Do you not see that it is actively dangerous to present wrong information like this?

I got this data from Spartacus. All these numbers are based on data from them https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay-travel-...

Use a different data source?

Shouldn’t have Saudi listed as anything other than “Do not travel” or you are giving people dangerously bad info!

Do you mention they anywhere on your site?

Yes, he does. It is on the RHS on the "LGBT+ Travel Rankings of the world" page (linked in OP).

"This ranking is based on 14 different paramters like civil rights, discrimation and persecution by Spartacus LGBT+ Travel."

Oh, yep I guess it is there. Seems like it could be a little more prominent, since this is basically just their dataset, with some filtering and ads (and a more confusing representation of the score).

> Oh, yep I guess it is there.

Yes, but it wasn't obvious to me. I only spotted it after careful reading AND knowing the data source was Spartacus. Anyone unfamiliar with that outlet probably wouldn't pick up on the connection. Given the HEAVY reliance on their data I agree that more prominence and a link would be nice.

Great website, really nice UX. Small bug with some of the data -- spot the "undefined"s:

"United States has a LGBT+ travel rank of 53 with a total gay travel score of 57. United States is part of Americas with main city at Washington, D.C.. Its Developed country with a population of 324M people. The main currency is undefined. The languages spoken are English. the United States of America is the formal name of undefined"

I bet you could ask 100 people what the "main city" in the US was and none of them would say D.C.

In general the U.S. seems varied enough that a single score isn't really meaningful... There's a pretty big difference between Seattle and rural Mississippi.

Maybe "main city" is a mistranslation of "capital"?

Thanks, mate for spotting the bug. I will fix it!

The data seems pretty out of date for Taiwan. LGBT couples can be married, and stepchildren can be adopted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Taiwan

This is based on 2019 report. I will update it on my site. Thanks mate!

> Equal Age of Consent: 67%

What does this mean? Spartacus has a 1 or 0 (true/false?) in this column.

No actually, If there are positive developments it will be scored from 1,2 or 3 and if there are negative developments then it will -1,-2 or -3 and if there isn't anything going on regarding that then it will be 0

I don't think this is right for every category though, the only thing in the methodology I could find is this

> The categories have different levels. If a category has three levels, a maximum of three points can be awarded.

Keyword being "if". They don't specify which categories these are. Logically how could you score higher than a 1 in equal age of consent, that's a true or false question right?

I checked 2017, 2018 and Canada held a consistent 1 score. I also found this in the 2017 document:

"With regard to anti-discrimination laws up to 3 points can be awarded, making a distinction, for example, whether the principle of non-discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in the constitution or only in a law for a specific area is shown."

https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/gaytravelindex_2017.pdf

Also in 2019 Kenya managed a -1 score. Presumably they had equality and repealed it.

Like so many others, these rankings seem to be far more focused on the LGB than the T.

Also, the site tells me that I'll get murdered or sentenced to death if I visit a given country, and then immediately below that displays an ad for flights to that country's capital city. I really don't think your CTR is going to be high on that particular ad placement.

https://visalist.io/russia/gay-travel

> The main currency is undefined.

It's the Russian Rouble (RUB).

> the Russian Federation is the formal name of undefined

I'm not sure what this is supposed to say, but according to the Russian constitution, the names “Russia” and “the Russian Federation” are synonymous.

At first I was surprised at how low the Russian Federation is on the list, but then I remembered that Chechnya exists. I guess a lot of these pages should have a note that YMMV, depending on the region and the city. Moscow shouldn't be that much different from Kiyiv or, say, Warsaw, while the North Caucasus regions are clearly closer to fundamentalist societies when it comes to LGBT+ rights.

Africa is a very large continent with countries that range from "have legalized same sex marriage" to "have death penalty for homosexuality", so saying a region is "clearly closer to Africa when it comes to LGBT+ rights" doesn't make a ton of sense..

You're right, that part was badly worded. I've changed it.

It seems to be based on laws mostly. So I am guessing due to Russia's rather terrible laws towards LGBT that's why it is so low.

But everyone that I clicked on had a lot of undefined data.

fixed the bug

Thanks for pointing out the bug. I just fixed it.

The 'Green Book' is back? Useful if accurate, but a sad commentary as well.

Israel is probably one of the few countries other than the USA were LGBTQ+ people were attacked and killed in public or in private spaces.

An ashkenazi religious Jew stabbed and killed a girl in a gay pride event in Jerusalem, and the government coalition is made up of some of the most externally homophobic (also Ashkenazi) MPs.

Israel has an image of tolerance because of TLV, which was mostly a tourism driven policy or gimmick. The rest of the country is really not gay friendly at all and personal safety is something to consider if you travel outside of TLV.

Mind you the murder of youth in a gay community club took place in TLV.

A simple Google Search proves this comment completely wrong...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_acts_of_violence_a...

The stubbing happened in public during a pride event in Jerusalem. Daylight.

The shooting in the youth club was of a guy who burst in and gunned them down.

Israel does not allow same sex marriage and having your right recognized l, if you got married outside is constantly challenged, as well as adoption by LGBTQ+ parents.

Openly homophobic MPs are almost as common as islamophobic or xenophobic (asylum seekers) ones, and no one was fired for any of the vile public statements made.

Israel’s image as a tolerant country is not reflected in its reality, as much as its claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East. It’s neither.

Ah yes, if it wasn't on that wikipedia page, it must not have happened. I know you aren't arguing in good faith, but here you go:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yishai_Schlissel

> Singapore is part of Asia with main city at Singapore. Its Developing country with a population of 6M people.

Singapore is a first world country.

fixed it

Singapore claims Developing Country status in the WTO [1], so it's not entirely inaccurate.

[1] https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-sup...

It misidentifies Macau as a "developing" region, despite having one of the highest HDI in the world.

Thanks for pointing it out, I have updated it.

It looks like you have a typo: "civit rights" instead of "civil rights".

Where do the numbers come from?

Thanks! fixed it. I got the data from https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay-travel-... which is also present in wikipedia

Interesting project

Does this account for how regional variation within each country? Because even in the UK, peoples attitudes can vary wildly from one town and city to another.

This is now based on country laws only. I haven't looked into how it's perceived in different regions in each country

Where does the data come from?

I collected the data from https://spartacus.gayguide.travel/blog/spartacus-gay-travel-...

> Italy

>Italy has a LGBT+ travel rank of 40 with a total gay travel score of 60. Italy is part of Europe with main city at Rome. Its Developed country with a population of 61M people. The main currency is undefined. The languages spoken are Italian. the Republic of Italy is the formal name of undefined

The currency is Euro, pretty much defined.

Republic of Italy is the formal name of Italy.

And the overall rating at first sight seem way off.

Most probably it is brought down by the 0% in "adoption allowed" which I cannot see the relevance of in the case of a travel.

Nothing happens when I press on the filter selection.

Latest Chrome mobile on Android 10.

> This ranking is based on 14 different paramters

*parameters

Also, according to International Monetary Fund, Russia is a developing, not developed, country.

civit rights -> civil rights?

The website deliberately breaks if no javascript.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com