Relevance to LGBT rights
This section highlights how the Council of Europe addressed the rights of LGBT people and in particular how the European Convention of Human Rights was used to advance the rights of LGBT poeple in Europe.
The European Convention on Human Rights has been of great significance in promoting LGBT rights over the last 20 years. The first successful case, Dudgeon v. U.K., was in 1981. The Court found that the total ban on same-sex sexual acts between adult consenting men in Northern Ireland was a violation of the Convention. Similar cases followed in Ireland ( Norris, 1988), and Cyprus ( Modinos, 1993).
Later, the European Commission on Human Rights found that the UK's discriminatory age of consent violated the Convention ( Sutherland v. UK, 1997). The European Court of Human Rights confirmed that the higher age of consent for gay men was discriminatory and breaches the European Convention on Human Rights in two more recent judgements, L. and V. v Austria (2003) and S.L. v Austria (2003) .
This was followed by judgments of the Court in 1999, which found that the UK's ban on lesbians and gays in the armed forces ( Lustig-Prean & Beckett v. United Kingdom, and Smith & Grady v. UK) and the Lisbon High Court's discriminatory treatment of a gay father in a custody case ( Salgueiro Da Silva Mouta v. Portugal (1999)) also violated the Convention.
In the case of ADT v. UK (2000), the Court found that the UK's discriminatory privacy laws were a violation of the Convention.
In the case of Goodwin v. UK (2002) a transsexual woman successfully argued that her convention rights were breached by the UK government's failure to provide legal recognition of her change of sex.
Karner v Austria (2003), is the first ever case relating to the rights of same-sex partners that the Court has agreed to consider. For the first time in its history, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that different treatment of unmarried heterosexual and homosexual partners is a discrimination based on sexual orientation and is contrary to the Convention.
The Parliamentary Assembly has passed a number of Recommendations supporting LGBT rights. These Recommendations are not binding on the member states, but have an important declaratory role:
Recommendation 924 (1981) - on discrimination against homosexuals.
Opinion No. 216 (2000)- Draft Protocol No. 12 to the European Convention on Human Rights.
Recommendation 1470 (2000) - Situation of gays and lesbians and their partners in respect of asylum and immigration in the member states of the Council of Europe.
Recommendation 1474 (2000) - Situation of lesbians and gays in Council of Europe member states.
Recommendation 1635 (2003) - Lesbians and gays in sport.
