LGBTQ Rights Campaigners with Lasting Legislative Impact

Most LGBTQ legal change came through a long relay between campaigners, plaintiffs, lawyers and legislators: a petition or a test case, a court ruling, then a law that a later parliament could amend but rarely undo. This list follows that relay through the people who carried it, from a Berlin doctor's petition against the criminal code in 1897 to marriage equality in Taiwan and decriminalisation in India. Each entry names the specific law or ruling the person helped produce, separates what courts decided from what campaigners argued, and credits the organisations and co-plaintiffs around them. Entries run in rough date order across Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia. Where a reform has since been narrowed or challenged, the entry says so.