LONDON - Gay Pride marches are mainstream in some countries and gay politicians, actors and pop stars are out and proud -- but homophobia is growing across the world with increasing numbers of countries making it punishable by death.

A new book published by human rights group Amnesty International says despite widespread acceptance of gays and lesbians in some countries, violent persecution of homosexuals is on the rise and has reached "epidemic" levels in others.

"Lesbian and gay people who form or join organizations, be they political or social, are being violently persecuted in many parts of the world where before they might have been unnoticed," writes the book's British author Vanessa Baird.

She singles out Uganda, Zimbabwe, Jamaica, El Salvador and Latin America in particular, where she says "the targeting and killing of transgender people has become an epidemic on streets."

The book, "Sex, Love and Homophobia," offers an overview of the experiences of gay, lesbian and transgender people around the world and gives a snapshot of their status in various societies today.

One British gay man interviewed describes how he was subjected to "aversion therapy" as a teenager in the 1960s because his mother could not accept her son was gay.

"I was locked up alone in a mental institution for 72 hours with supposedly gay pornography and given drugs to make me vomit and become incontinent," he said. "They said the next part of the treatment was to apply electrodes to my genitals. After three days I begged to be let out."

In the United States, Baird notes an increasing polarization of attitudes. "While San Francisco boasts the largest openly gay community of any city in the world, anti-homosexual movements in Kansas, Ohio and Colorado advocate as a 'Christian duty' the rejection, and in some cases even killing, of gay people."

"And this is not all just a small group of nutters in the mid-West," she told Reuters. "This kind of evangelism is growing, and unfortunately a substantial part of it is homophobic and says homosexuality is a sin or a disease."

Baird's book also focuses on countries where homosexuality is punishable by death -- Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Mauritania, Sudan, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Yemen and northern provinces of Nigeria.

Baird quotes Iran's 1991 Islamic penal law, which states "sodomy is a crime" and "punishment is death if the participants are adults, of sound mind and consenting."

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu uses a foreword to the book to condemn homophobia as "every bit as unjust as that crime against humanity, apartheid."

"I could not have fought against the discrimination of apartheid and not also fight against the discrimination homosexuals endure," he wrote.

South Africa became the first country in the world in 1996 to include a clause in its constitution to guarantee freedom from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

© Copyright 2004 Reuters Ltd

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