In 2017, my wife, Julian, and I were having dinner with friends when the conversation turned to same-sex marriage. “Not a problem any more, right?” one said, convinced that there were now equal rights for all. Over lentil stew, we had to tell them that, at the time, gay couples could get married in only 22 countries; to this day, homosexuality is criminalised in 64 and carries a possible or definite death sentence in 11.
As the conversation went from inequality to the latest Kara Walker exhibition, I started thinking: how could we get those numbers out there? Change starts with knowledge and it was clear our friends were shocked that my wife and I couldn’t marry in more than 170 countries.
