While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international treaties prohibit discrimination and specify that everyone has a right to privacy, over 80 countries currently have sodomy laws or other legal provisions criminalizing homosexuality. Apart from the inherent violation of criminalizing sexual conduct, these laws empower police and other authorities to abuse, harass, extort, imprison and execute people whose sexual orientation, gender identity or expression differs from dominant norms. We believe that eliminating sodomy laws is fundamental for advancing a universal vison of human rights and work alongside other activists to decriminalize homosexuality.