Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in Morocco face significant challenges not experienced by non-LGBTQ residents.
[6] The legal status of LGBTQ people living in Morocco stems largely from traditional Islamic morality, which views homosexuality and cross-dressing as signs of immorality.
[14] On 21 March 2008, a statement issued by the Ministry of Interior reinforced the government's intention to "preserve citizens' ethics and defend our society against all irresponsible actions that mar our identity and culture".
[15] In foreign policy, the government opposed the participation of an international gay and lesbian rights representative at the 2001 United Nations Conference on AIDS-HIV.
The initial lack of female actors meant that the roles often went to men, who were generally assumed to be homosexual, but were shown a modicum of tolerance.
In the 1950s, the publicity surrounding French actress and entertainer Coccinelle helped to establish Casablanca as being a place where certain doctors were willing to perform sex change operations, albeit in clandestine circumstances.
The country has a male-dominated culture, a patriarchal society with traditional gender roles, that prefers a male and a female to get married and have children.
[16] The government has sporadically continued to enforce the laws on homosexuality with occasional public arrests carried out in routine fashion.
A court in Ksar el-Kebir, a small city about 120 kilometres south of Tangier, convicted six men on 10 December 2007 of violating article 489 of Morocco's penal code.
[19] In a similar sense, the government will not officially recognize the LGBTQ rights organization, Kif-Kif, but has allowed it to exist and co-sponsor some educational seminars.
[19] In 2017, following the United Nations' Universal Periodic Review in Geneva, Mustafa Ramid, former Minister of Justice and Liberties in Abdelilah Benkirane's and Saadeddine Othmani's governments, called homosexuals "trash" in an interview.
According to sociologist Khalid Mouna, she “tries to make her group undergo the same family rupture by adopting the discourse and the codes of her own detractors.