[11] Information he provided persuaded Amnesty International to recognize the two men as prisoners of conscience, the first time the organization had taken up the case of a couple jailed for their sexual orientation.

[14] In 1993 Long conducted the first-ever mission to Albania to investigate the state of LGBT rights and to meet with gay activists there, and his documentation of arrests and abuses helped lead to the repeal of that country's sodomy law.

[15]Long documented Cetiner's story and persuaded Amnesty International to adopt her as a prisoner of conscience, the first time the organization had taken up the case of a lesbian imprisoned for her sexual orientation.

In the next three years, according to political scientist Clifford Bob, Long "enthusiastically and skillfully" pushed the Romanian government toward full repeal of Article 200, which was finally achieved in 2001.

[13] Between 1998 and 2002, he organized a project bringing many grassroots lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender activists from the global South to speak and advocate before the then United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

In 2001, six independent experts—high-level individuals appointed by the UN to investigate patterns of human rights abuse—publicly reached out to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities, formally declaring that these issues lay within their official mandates.

[24] In May 2001, police in Cairo raided a floating Nile discothèque called the Queen Boat, arresting dozens of men and staging a show trial for "blasphemy" as well as "debauchery.

"[25] Long later wrote: On the night of May 11, 2001, as I worked late in my office in New York, my inbox began filling with e-mails from [an] anonymous man, whose roommate had been seized in the discotheque raid.

[27] Through Human Rights Watch, he also documented a brutal government assault on anti-war activists, Islamists, and the political Left,[28] as well as persecution of African refugees and other vulnerable groups.

[31]Long's work on Egypt also focused on the medicalization of sexuality, including the practice of inflicting spurious forensic anal examinations on suspected gay men to "prove" their guilt.

Bruce Rabb, a member of HRW's governing board, remembered that when Long spoke to the board, "The depth of Scott's knowledge and the passion he had for his work, combined with the dramatic effectiveness of his research and advocacy in Egypt, made it clear to all present that, while setting up an LGBT program would break significant new ground for Human Rights Watch, Scott's program would be core to Human Rights Watch's mission and definitely should be undertaken.

"[30] After his time in Egypt, Long's work increasingly explored how governments (and forces bidding for political power) exploit fears around sexuality and gender to create massive moral panics.

"Gay and lesbian rights," the dignity of people with different desires, the basic principle of non-discrimination based on sexual orientation: all these are painted as incompatible with fundamental values, even with humanity itself.

… The role of human rights principles, unquestionably, is to mark out spaces of personal freedom, to affirm areas where individual privacy and dignity and autonomy should prevail against state or community regulation.

Long cited the evidence of an "unexpected Europe" rolling back the post-1989 democratic advances: "faces bleeding, people running, the air streaked with tear-gas trails.

[45] Long went to Moscow in 2006 to support Russian activists, including Nikolay Alexeyev, attempting to organize a gay pride march in defiance of an official ban.

During his tenure, Human Rights Watch embarked on in-depth investigations of punitive rapes of black lesbians and transgender men in South Africa;[49] arrests of LGBT people in Cameroon;[50] and the impact of Senegal's sodomy law.

[51] Long cooperated closely with activists in Nigeria in opposing the "Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act" introduced in 2006, which would have punished displays of same-sex affection as well as any public statements in support of LGBT people's freedoms.

Long repeatedly stressed that state-sponsored homophobia and repressive laws against LGBT people in Africa should not be seen in isolation, but as part of broader government campaigns against civil society.

[59] Long also wrote a survey of the strategies, priorities, and needs of grassroots sexual-rights activism around the globe,[40] and together with Indian activist Alok Gupta a history of the colonial origins of sodomy laws around the world.

[65] In 2010, Susana T. Fried of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said, "Compared to a decade ago, many more governments and international organizations recognize the rights and lives of LGBT people as their legitimate concern ... Scott has made innumerable contributions to this change, and his leadership has been vital.

"[30] Long played a key role in developing the Yogyakarta Principles, an influential set of guidelines on how human rights law applies to issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.

On Monday, April 6, Long and his colleagues began posting warnings and requests for information on the 1,100 Iraqi ads on Manjam, an international gay personals site.

[66]In addition to assisting numerous men to flee the violence to safer countries, Long researched a detailed report on the pattern of death-squad killings, placing main responsibility squarely on Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, which hoped to use a moral panic to reassert its relevance amid the US "surge" in Iraq.

In 2012, when a new wave of death-squad killings erupted in Baghdad, Long—by then a fellow at Harvard Law School—demonstrated that the attack grew from a state-promoted moral panic over "emos"[68] allegedly corrupting Iraqi youth.

[81] In 2009, Long wrote an article, published in the Routledge journal Contemporary Politics,[82] on Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni which sharply criticized the accuracy of claims Tatchell and OutRage!

[84][85][86] The article had been widely praised; Dianne Otto, a professor of international law, called it "meticulous genealogy of some western LGBTI advocacy of sexuality rights in Iran.

[90][91][92] In an open letter published in February 2016, 165 activists and academics cited the withdrawal of Long's article as well as other incidents and accused Tatchell of "intolerance of criticism and disrespect for others' free expression.

[30] He wrote, "While running to catch a bus on a New York street, I saw a blinding effusion of white light, amid which several spangled and bell-bottomed figures vaguely resembling ABBA beckoned me to an eternal disco complete with spinning ball.

"[95] Although for nine years Egypt's law against "debauchery" had almost never been enforced, after the July 2013 military coup that brought General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power, a new crackdown on LGBT people began.