Attacking Democracy, Attacking LGBT Rights
What to make of rising global homophobia
Around the world, LGBT rights are in trouble. In the US, panic over trans people has quickly expanded into a full-on anti-LGBT assault, with books and even conversations about gay people and sexual identity in school under attack in Florida; I have no doubt other conservative states will follow suit. In Uganda, where American Evangelicals are a large and influential presence, an extreme anti-gay bill criminalizes even touching another person “with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality” (same-sex intercourse is already punishable by life imprisonment). In neighboring Kenya, conservatives are having a meltdown over a Supreme Court ruling that said the government cannot restrict the right of association for LGBT rights groups, even though the Court was clear that homosexuality remains a crime in Kenya. In Italy, the neofascist government just announced it is limiting the parental rights of same-sex couples.
In Russia, assaults on LGBT life and rights have been central to Vladimir Putin’s regime, and he has framed his invasion of Ukraine as a part of a larger story of traditionalism versus Western decadence — and changing norms around gender and sexual identity:
“Do we really want us, here in our country, in Russia, instead of ‘mom and dad,’ to have ‘parent number 1, number 2, number 3′?” Putin asked in a national address last year. “They’ve gone totally crazy! Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed on children in our schools, in elementary grades? To be drummed into them that besides women and men, there are supposedly some ‘genders’?”
He continued:
“If Western elites believe that they can indoctrinate their societies with strange … newfangled trends like dozens of genders and gay Pride parades, then so be it, let them do what they want. But what they certainly do not have the right to do is to require others to follow in the same direction.”
The current Russian regime has been very supportive of efforts in Kenya and elsewhere to curtail gay rights. Make no mistake: This is an international effort.
Attacks on minority communities, and on LGBT people in particular, are hallmarks of modern authoritarianism. With the rise of authoritarian regimes around the world, we’ve seen related rises in misogyny and homophobia.
And this really is at the core of so much of what divides us — what divides Americans from each other; what divides pluralistic democracies from authoritarian regimes. These really are two distinct and irreconcilable world views. While certainly people who generally want to live in pluralistic democracies are divided on what the best set of laws and policies might look like, there are some basic tenets that we can all agree on: That people should elect their own leaders; that while majority-rule generally goes, minorities should have their rights protected against the tyranny of the majority; that adults should be generally free to live their lives so long as they aren’t hurting anyone else; that freedoms of speech, expression, and religious practice are foundational.
These are not the view of authoritarians. They are not the views, notably, of much of today’s Republican Party in the United States.
The authoritarian view is that a singular, narrow way of life is the only acceptable one; that a single strong leader who maintains consistency is more valuable than the inconsistencies and messiness of democratic rule; and that control over a population is preferable to broad personal freedoms that inevitably break down old norms. For religious authoritarians, life should be e dictated by a particular reading of religious text and tradition; in the US that’s right-wing Evangelical Christianity, while in Saudi Arabia it’s a far-right for of Islam, while in Israel it’s an ultra-conservative form of Judaism. The religion matters less than the arrogance and the narcissism, and the demand that everyone else adhere and submit.
You see these greater world views coming into conflict with views on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For the most part, Americans who value liberal democracy and human rights — and believe an aggressive imperialistic power should not simply be able to storm into a neighboring nation and take it — support Ukrainian self-defense, and support the US providing assistance to that self-defense (some of these same Americans, myself included, also opposed the US invasion of Iraq on the same grounds).
The powerful Americans who generally oppose any US aid to Ukraine are overwhelmingly (though not universally) Trump Republicans. And they don’t oppose aiding Ukraine just because of America First ideals and an allergy to sending money abroad (they were happy to send the largest military aid package in US history to Israel’s far-right government). They oppose sending aid to Ukraine because they are ideologically more aligned with Russia and other authoritarian nations — in Europe, that’s Hungary and Poland and, next door, Turkey.
That ideology: Traditionalism. Conservative religiosity. Patriarchy.
These are the ties that bind global authoritarians. And while those authoritarians are happy to use democratic systems to advance their interests, they are also happy to abandon them the moment that’s what it takes to cement their power.
Strongmen need an enemy to stand strong against. Enemies must be both outside and in: The immigrants coming to change your culture; the feminists and human rights activists trying to change it from the inside. In many nations, LGBT people are a convenient both: Sure, they may be citizens, but their lifestyles are so unnatural and un-whatever (un-African, un-Russian) that the whole idea of homosexuality or trans identity must have been imported. And they are easily made into a threat — to a good and decent way of life, to the nuclear family, to children.
Here’s the thing: LGBT people and laws that protect them are a threat to the nuclear family, religious traditionalism, and patriarchy. Not because LGBT people are doing anything other than living their lives, but in living outside of a heterosexual family model, they prove that there is something outside of a heterosexual family model. And that, in turn, calls into question the hierarchies and inequalities in traditional nuclear families. For people who very much want to preserve those hierarchies — who want to preserve patriarchy, and who want their way of living to be the only way — this is an acute threat.
It’s been strange and scary to watch extreme homophobia reemerge in the United States. I am not totally naive and was not under the impression that anti-gay views were gone, but Americans have become largely accepting of gay people, and since the national legalization of same-sex marriage, society has not collapsed; being aggressively homophobic has become far less of a Republican Party thing, and less common nationwide.
Or at least, it had become far less of a Republican Party thing, and less common nationwide. That seems to be changing (and attacks on trans people seem to be the gateway drug — when conservatives win their anti-trans battles, they then set their sights on gay men and lesbians). In many parts of the world, trends toward liberalization and human rights affirmation have stalled. As authoritarians have sought and come into power, they’ve taken aim at the LGBT community.
This is not relegated to any one country or any one region or even any one religious tradition (although national attacks on LGBT rights do universally come from leaders claiming the mantle of religion). But it is entirely related to attacks on democracy, women’s rights, and human rights.
xx Jill
Hi Jill, the growing homophobia in the US is a worrying and disheartening trend. I think there is a case to be made that this homophic backlash stems from a reaction to the aggressive and unforgiving efforts to push new gender identity norms onto culture that seem irrational and arbitrary to most people. "The religion matters less than the arrogance and the narcissism, and the demand that everyone else adhere and submit." You are correct to point out traditional religions are fueling radical policies and intolerance, but I think the progressives need to recognize that a similar religious dynamic is at play within their secular humanist ideology. There is an obvious dogmatism when it comes to transgenderism and other new gender identities that has diminished the credibility of LGBT+ rights advocates in the eyes of more conservative people who may not live in coastal cities or have attended elite coastal universities. When people can't get straight answers for questions like "what is a woman?" Or when people born biologically male competing as women dominate women's sporting events on a public scale they create easy opportunities for right wingers to score easy cultural wins with their voters and conservatives become less likely or willing to listen to nuanced stories about people who rightfully fall into a transgender identity. When identity is explained as how one feels about themselves vs "how they were born", which was the case made to encourage acceptance of gay people as having a natural and uncontrollable sexual atteaction to people of the same sex like heterosexual people, they recoil back into old intolerant ideas to fight what they see as an encroaching cultural radicalism that they don't understand and can't question or challenge without punishment from public institutions so they ally more closely with religious ones and the churches now have an audience more willing to listen to anti homosexuality religious messages.
It feels like the authoritarians have found an ideal target in trans people: compared to the broader queer community, it is a very tiny minority (~1% of the US, though tellingly the average American apparently thinks it’s over 20%!) and very visible — a newly transitioned transwoman can hardly help but stick out at work, all day, for example. It makes it that much easier to insert propaganda about “transgender ideology” (rather than just accepting a small but natural part of human variation which has been around as long as we can tell) or “over-aggressive activism that deserves a backlash” (which of course has been used against every other assertion of basic human rights, over and over). But the passage of hate-fuelled bills in GOP-dominated state legislatures make it all too clear it really is just the point of the spear.