While it sounds like an arcane ritual from a race of inhabitants of Middle-earth, this mangled acronym stands for the ‘International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia”. Its genesis was in the campaigns of the 1970s and 80s for equal rights for gay and lesbians to end long-standing pervasive and state-mandated discrimination and often violence against homosexualists. Its inaugural was 17 May 2004, the date specifically chosen to commemorate the World Health Organisation’s decision in 1990 to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder.