LGBTQ+ Travel Alert

A free Chrome extension that alerts you when booking travel to places with dangerously discriminatory LGBTQ+ laws - countries like Uzbekistan, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and, as of 2023, yes, Florida.

Works on Booking.com, Kayak, Google Flights, Airbnb, VRBO and Priceline. The idea is to help people make informed decisions about where they spend their money. Or as the README puts it: “Instead: choose something fabulous.”

The idea and design came from the Center for Artistic Activism (C4AA) and Steve Lambert. I built it. I’m also on C4AA’s board.

• Install from Chrome Web Store
• Source code on GitHub
• lgbtqtravelalert.org (archived copy)
• C4AA announcement post

History

C4AA had spent the previous year working to decriminalize homosexuality in Uzbekistan, where authorities investigate, imprison, and torture gay men. The UN’s World Tourism Organization was holding its 2023 General Assembly there anyway, and had picked Saudi Arabia for the next one.

It came together fast. My first commit, titled “It works”, landed August 7, 2023. Over the next few days I added the country list, the modal and a build script. Steve did the design, more countries and cities, Priceline support, and Russian spellings of the place names with thanks to Sasha Yuri for the translations, plus Arabic for Uzbekistan after launch. The Chrome Web Store version, 1.0.1, is from August 10.

We launched it on August 16 for #LGBTQTourismDay. As the announcement put it, with more pressure Uzbekistan could catch up to neighbors like Kazakhstan, which decriminalized in 1998.

Built with vanilla JavaScript, developed against Brave. It should work fine in Chrome and maybe even Edge or Arc. Open source (MIT), no tracking.