Gay and Lesbian Travelers

Although legal, homosexuality is Honduras [1] is a closeted affair. There are few resources for gay and lesbian travelers, and the attitude of many locals toward homosexuality is strongly informed by anti-gay Catholic and/or machista perspectives. Gay marriage and adoption were officially banned in Honduras in 2005, by a constitutional amendment written in backlash to the government’s formal recognition of three gay civil rights groups a few months earlier.

There are eight gay rights groups in Honduras, with roughly 5,000 members. Comunidad Gay Sampedrana in San Pedro Sula [2] is Honduras’s oldest LGBT organization (they have organized an annual pride march since 2001), and it shares office space with the lesbian-rights organization Mujer Sin Límite.

San Pedro and Tegucigalpa [3] each have a gay bar. While Roatán [4] and Utila [5] do not have any gay or lesbian bars, the international atmosphere in West End [6] and Utila Town [7], if not exactly gay-friendly, is at least gay-tolerant, and may be a more comfortable environment for same-sex couples than much of the mainland.

There are a number of transgender sex workers in Honduras’s major cities, and three transgender activists were killed in late 2008 and early 2009 in Tegucigalpa [3], raising fears of increased violence against the transgender community.