LGBTQ people experience violence directed toward their sexuality, gender identity, or gender expression. This violence may be enacted by the state, as in laws prescribing punishment for homosexual acts, or by individuals. It may be psychological or physical and motivated by biphobia, gayphobia, homophobia, lesbophobia, and transphobia. Influencing factors may be cultural, religious, or political mores and biases.
Currently, homosexual acts are legal in almost all Western countries, and in many of these countries violence against LGBTQ people is classified as a hate crime. Outside the West, many countries are deemed potentially dangerous to their LGBTQ population due to both discriminatory legislation and threats of violence. These include most African countries (except South Africa), most Asian countries (except some LGBTQ-friendly countries as Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines), and some former communist countries such as Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia and Serbia. Such violence is often associated with religious condemnation of homosexuality or conservative social attitudes that portray homosexuality as an illness or a character flaw.