The Rise of Neoconservative Queerphobia
Meanwhile, the last ten years have seen the development of a very different neoconservative approach towards LGBTQ people among many governments. Of course, homophobic and transphobic attitudes have a long history. But a new form of bigotry first appeared in 2009, when a Ugandan MP introduced an Anti-Homosexuality Act which proposed criminalization of same sex acts and the death penalty for repeat offenders. In 2011, after the proposal became law, a leading gay activist was beaten to death. The Ugandan Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional in 2014, but the same constitution has also banned same-sex marriage since 2005. In Malawi in 2012, a man and a trans woman were arrested at a betrothal ceremony and sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment; after international pressure they were eventually freed. As well as in Africa, government-sponsored homophobia and transphobia have developed in some Central and Eastern European countries and Muslim-majority ones, though by no means all. At the moment municipalities in about a third of Poland have declared themselves to be “gay free zones,” pledging to avoid encouraging tolerance or financially assisting equal rights NGOs.
These characterizations are of governments, not of populations. Public opinion is much more varied and complex. It’s true that last July, a Pride march in Białystok in north eastern Poland was attacked with stones, bottles, and firecrackers. But it’s also the case that the previous month had seen a pride march in Warsaw attended by 47,000 people. That public opinion and legal practice can vary within one country is most dramatically shown in the US, where California law mandates the teaching of LGBTQ history in schools while in Alabama it’s a crime to sell sex toys. The social norms of New York and the Deep South are very different, as are attitudes within and among “red” and “blue” states. Atlanta is a major LGBTQ hub, while on Staten Island, this year, Miss Staten Island was banned from participation in the St. Patrick’s Day parade after coming out as bisexual.
British government rhetoric is still strongly in favor of legal equality around sexual orientation, though many on the right would no doubt be happy if attacks on trans people open the door to an increase in official homophobia. These are crucial points to make if we’re to avoid stereotypes of America as the land of freedom (an idea which turns up in LGBTQ culture worldwide, oddly enough), Western Europe as civilized and tolerant, Eastern Europeans as backward, and Muslim and African people as simply inferior. It may be that life for queer people in London is, on average, better than that for queer people in Kampala or Białystok. But it’s a false generalization to divide the world up on that basis, in a reinvention of nineteenth-century imperialist attitudes, into “civilized” and “uncivilized” nations.
As many people have pointed out, many of the homophobic laws now used to oppress people in African countries were initially introduced by colonial occupiers. Back then, colonizers argued that comparatively relaxed, egalitarian African attitudes to sex demonstrated an inferior culture and restrictive European attitudes a superior one. Now it’s the relaxed European attitudes which denote a civilized approach, but Africans are still being held collectively responsible for the “backward” policies of their governments. What’s more, just as Christian missionaries brought homophobia to Africa in the nineteenth century, evangelical Christians – often based in the US – have been behind the growth of government homophobia throughout the world. In Uganda, American evangelists prompted the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality bill by speaking at meetings involving thousands of people the previous year. At present, American fundamentalist organisations form part of global alt-right networks that are channeling tens of millions of dollars into homophobic campaigns in countries including Hungary and Poland, as well as those led by the far right elsewhere in Europe.
So we can’t straightforwardly take government attitudes to LGBTQ people as an index of whether a country is neoliberal and “advanced” or neoconservative and “backward.” But, many people will say, assuming we can put that to one side, don’t we have to accept that neoliberalism may not be ideal, but it’s a far better option than state-sponsored oppression, including imprisonment, violence, and murder? And yes, to have come in Britain from imprisonment of men who have sex with other men to protection of employment rights, or in California from compulsory sterilization of “moral or sexual perverts” to a ban on conversion therapy – these developments are unquestionably huge advances.