Once a region of diverse religious views and sexual pluralism, the Indian Subcontinent yielded to complex conservatism coexisting with tolerance to sexual violence towards women and those marginalised. Sri Lanka has been voted the top emerging travel destination in Asia by the gay-friendly travel website Travel Lemming. The socioeconomic differences between a sexual minority person who lives in Colombo and one who lives in a rural village also place the two on opposite ends of quality-of-life. The island's sexual minorities face problems with homophobia, a lack of positive media coverage, and very little societal culture catering for the community.
Vigilante attacks, torture, forced anal examinations, beatings, and vigilante executions also tolerated. Article 365 of the Sri Lankan Penal Code, which criminalizes same-sex sexual acts remains on the books, though reports have variously referred to it as rarely used However, human rights organizations have reported that police and government workers used the threat of arrest to assault, harass, and sexually and monetarily extort LGBTI individuals.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender ( LGBT) people in Sri Lanka face legal and social challenges not faced by non-LGBT people. It is likely that there are around 1,100,000 according to current mapping conventions. Sexual minorities in Sri Lanka have been counted in recent times as consisting of as little as 0.035% of the population to as high as 19.6%. ( March 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Please help by editing the article to make improvements to the overall structure. This article may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines.