Why LGBTQ+ is in the crosshairs of right-wing populism
• Community poses what paleoconservatives, right-wingers and religious fundamentalists see as a danger to modern societies
THE SWING TO THE RIGHT … IS MARKED BY A REJECTION OF THE IDEA THAT PEOPLE ARE FREE TO DEFINE THEIR SEXUAL PREFERENCES
The lives, choices and very presence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer people, and the free choice of sexual preferences or gender choices (LGBTQ+), have become politically globalised.
The most high-profile evidence of this has been the tension about displaying signs of symbols that celebrate the LGBTQ+ community at the football World Cup in Qatar. More than anything it is a reminder of the power to resist, oppose and simply erase anything that does not fit the values of what is considered “normal,” or what runs against religious dogma.
Dismissed as “perverse,” and described pejoratively by the right as “gender ideology,” the LGBTQ+ movement has been associated with “multiculturalism” and “globalism,” which are considered as too liberal by right-wing populists. These associations have become part of efforts to “cleanse” society of “impurities” and reassert the purity of “nations”.
While these are essentially macro and ideological trends, they have played out in fields from Iran and the Middle East, westward across Europe and into North America.
In Poland, for instance, this has led to the creation of “LGBTfree zones” across the country, and LGBTQ+ people have been associated with paedophilia. This has resulted in the actual stoning of gay people and the burning of pride flags during pride parades.
The Polish case is one of many cases around the world where homophobia has become part of right-wing populism, over the first two decades of the millennium. Homophobic and transphobic rhetoric and other anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes have been rising across Europe, “fuelled by divisive politics and socially conservative groups that also campaign against abortion access,” an advocacy group told Reuters.
Hate speech by political and religious leaders and violence against the LGBTQ+ community have increased in 17 European countries, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA). “It’s not just countries of Eastern Europe where people traditionally think there is more organised opposition — the groups that are opposing LGBTI equality are popping up in more places,” said Evelyne Paradis, the executive director of ILGA-Europe.
n short, the LGBTQ+
I community rubs against the grain of what paleoconservatives, rightwingers and religious fundamentalists consider to be a danger to democratic and republican societies.
To get an idea of how this right-wing populism started, we can turn to the US. In that country, right-wing or illiberal politics is driven by a belief that “traditional family values,” were being suppressed, and that the LGBTQ+ movement was part of the destruction of what was once “a great country” governed by the values of Judeo-Christian civilisation. The politics of cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and globalism, as Donald Trump and his followers often ineloquently stated, were a danger to “the America of our parents”.
We should be careful when pointing to the US as the only field where homophobia is increasing as part of the rise of right-wing politics. In theocratic societies homosexuality is considered to be “evil,” and against the wishes and will of the God of Abraham. The point that is important, here, is that there are very few, if any, countries that want to emulate Islamic states. The US has been the standout example of secular and republican democracies.
For better or for worse, the US has been a cultural reference point for most of the period after World War 2. From the distribution and the actual social reach of “American” music (jazz, rock and roll, pop and hip hop), film (Hollywood), consumer capitalist culture’s most famous brands (Coca-Cola, Levis, Apple), the automobile and romance of Route 66 and “wide open spaces,” that country has shaped much of the cultural imagination of the world within the reach of the US.
The politics of the US, too, have influenced the world to the extent that it became widely acknowledged that “as goes America so goes the world”. Thus goes the refrain of a hymn by American prelate, Palmer Hartsough: “As goes America, so goes the world. Foremost and highest is her station. As goes America, so goes the world. Leader and guide to every nation.”
This is consistent with the philosophical belief and political statement that America is not a country, but a cause, “the cause of all mankind,” as the 18th century thinker Thomas Paine, explained. And so, as it is often said, colloquially, “when America sneezes, the world catches a cold”.
We have, then, a quite unsophisticated elision between “American values” and the values of the world. To be clear, this extension of American values has not been achieved by accident or by osmosis, it has been quite purposefully driven.
Take the example of the wave of antihomosexuality in Uganda. In 2014, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni signed a controversial antihomosexuality bill into law. The bill widened sodomy laws already on the books, and criminalises engagement in or promotion of homosexuality.
I take no pride in this; one of my former students at the University of South Carolina was part of the Christian evangelicals who drove this mission. This mission was captured in the 2013 film God Loves Uganda, the story of how Americans “both abrasive political leaders and fresh-faced children from the Midwest — exported their anti-gay culture wars to Ugandan soil,” the journalist Brandon Ambrosino explained. When he was interviewed about his film, God Loves Uganda, Roger Williams, explained that “homophobia is the real Western import starting with the first missionary and sodomy laws”.
Again, it would be disingenuous to blame the US completely for the global spread of anti-LGBTQ+ politics. To be sure, in 2004, same-sex marriage was legal in just one state in the US. Within, 10 or 12 years, through a combination of court decisions, ballot initiatives, and laws pushed through state legislatures marriage equality spread across all the states of the US.
But, this equality has come under severe threat from
legislators on the right. For instance, when expressing her opposition to the Equality Act
— which would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation in the US — right-wing politician Lauren Boebert dismissed the act saying “there is nothing about equality in that act. If anything, it’s supremacy — of gays, lesbians”.
This is part of a pattern of reversals of LGBTQ+ gains around the world, and illustrates how quickly perceptions and politics can change. In Brazil, the rights and visibility of marginalised communities increased after the turn of the century. Things quickly turned ugly when Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right president, was elected in 2019. His rise was marked by increased discrimination, stigmatisation and outright violence against the LGBTQ+ community (and sex workers of all genders).
Homosexuality continues to be criminalised around the world. The latest data (2021) show that 71 countries criminalise “private consensual same sex sexual activity”; 43 countries criminalise “consensual sexual activity between women”; 11 countries impose the death penalty for “private consensual, same-sex sexual activity,” and 15 jurisdictions criminalise “the gender identity and/or expression of transgender people” including “crossdressing” or “impersonation”.
Almost all these “jurisdictions” are in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. The death penalty is imposed or is at least a possibility in Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The point to make then is that none of these countries seeks to actively export their views to the world.
Perhaps Russia wants to extend its sphere of influence in this regard. It is worth noting that late last month, Russia’s parliament passed the third and final reading of a law banning “LGBT propaganda” among all adults. There is a clear pattern emerging that the right, and autocratic states (secular and theocratic), are forging ahead with anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
as t is“not a cause too outlandish in the world a
I claim to make that the US,
” is most aggressive in exporting “the American model” across the globe.
It is no surprise, for instance, that when Steve Bannon left Donald Trump’s side, his campaign to establish a base for the right in Europe was well received by Italy’s right-wing, notably by Matteo Salvini, an admirer of Vladimir Putin, and France’s Marine Le Pen of the National Front.
Addressing a gathering of the National Front, in 2018, Bannon said: “What I’ve learned [from visiting Europe] is that you’re part of a worldwide movement that is bigger than France, bigger than Italy, bigger than Hungary, bigger than all of it,” Bannon told to the gathering to applause.
“And history is on our side. The tide of history is with us and will compel us to victory after victory after victory.”
While the current administration of Joe Biden is probably a lot more “tolerant” (tolerance is often misguided and misplaced), the right wing in that country, in solidarity with despots around the world, would insist, to be sure, that the world would be a better place
when “good old-fashioned American values” are exported across the globe.
A sliver of good news emerged from Singapore, also towards the end of last month, when that state’s government finally repealed law 377A an inheritance of the former British colonists, and which banned sex between two men.
As it goes, then, the world has witnessed a quite forceful swing to the right that has been driven by populism, a surge in ethno-nationalism and searches for purity that sought to consolidate American exceptionalism, and make America great again.
This swing to the right is marked by an emphasis on “traditional family values,” and a rejection of the idea that people are free to define their sexual preferences and gender identities. It is in this bed of angst, often expressed in rather crude and banal populist rhetoric, where a violent opposition to LGBTQ+ rights grew.
While these tendencies have always brewed in dark corners and smoke-filled chambers, in Sunday school lessons, in “traditional families” in religious doctrines, and evangelical gatherings (my first-hand experiences were in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod in the Upper Midwest of the US), they coalesced at about the time when the American Tea Party, a conservative political movement, was born in 2009, arguably as a reaction to the presidency of Barack Obama.
Over the decade or so that followed, right-wing movements around the world became emboldened. In the West, there emerged the “dirty fascism” of Donald Trump,
Victor Orban in Hungary; Salvini and Georgia Meloni in Italy; Narendra Modi in India; Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Some of them have come and gone, but they provided a stamp of approval, as it were, to a range of crude right-wing formations opposed to “globalism,” “multiculturalism ,”“critical race theory” and LGBTQ+ rights.
American values have shaped much of the world for most of the past 125 years or so since Coca-Cola began to “share happiness”. Since the end of World War 2, the US has made significant contributions to science and political economy around the world.
H
owever, the surge of right-wing populism that started with the teaparty movement, culminated in the rise of the Make America Great Again and the contiguous “return to values” that preclude sexual preferences and the very place and being of the LGBTQ+ community, has influenced attitudes around the world.
In fairness, Washington cannot be blamed for homophobia in Tehran, Kabul or Lagos. We should probably keep in focus the difference between the global effort to spread “American values” and homophobia within societies and that are so fundamental to belief systems. This is not to say that Muslims are not proselytisers.
For now, there is little evidence that secular liberal or republican democracies want to emulate Afghanistan, Iran or Yemen. The US, for better or for worse, remains a reference point for states and societies in most of the world. And this is no source comfort for the LGBTQ+ community.