Although legal, homosexuality is Honduras is a closeted affair. There are few resources for gay and lesbian travelers, and the attitude of many locals toward homosexuality is strongly informed by anti-gay Catholic and/or machista perspectives. Gay marriage and adoption were officially banned in Honduras in 2005, by a constitutional amendment written in backlash to the government’s formal recognition of three gay civil rights groups a few months earlier.

There are eight gay rights groups in Honduras, with roughly 5,000 members. Comunidad Gay Sampedrana in San Pedro Sula is Honduras’s oldest LGBT organization (they have organized an annual pride march since 2001), and it shares office space with the lesbian-rights organization Mujer Sin Límite.

San Pedro and Tegucigalpa each have a gay bar. While Roatán and Utila do not have any gay or lesbian bars, the international atmosphere in West End and Utila Town, if not exactly gay-friendly, is at least gay-tolerant, and may be a more comfortable environment for same-sex couples than much of the mainland.

There are a number of transgender sex workers in Honduras’s major cities, and three transgender activists were killed in late 2008 and early 2009 in Tegucigalpa, raising fears of increased violence against the transgender community.