Homonationalism in Africa

MEHAMMED AMADEUS MACK

Assistant Professor of French Studies
Smith College, Northampton, MA

A particular form of gay advocacy that frames gay rights in

nationalistic terms that privilege American and European
expressions over those of the Middle East and the Global
South, particularly Africa.

Homonationalism, as first elaborated by Jasbir K. Puar (2007), refers to a

nationalistic, patriotic gay-friendliness that branches out from American
exceptionalism and European imperialism, claiming superiority over and
reMecting religious and racial Others that it deems sexually illiberal or
intolerant. It can more broadly encompass the commission of an otherwise
“progressive” LGBT agenda toward less than progressive, xenophobic,
Islamophobic, or racist ends. Momin Rahman (2014) coined a related term,
homocolonialism, which describes how gay rights platforms are being used
to mark a civilizational divide and denigrate societies that stand on the
“wrong” side of it. Gay imperialism is a term created to describe the
European context with its important Muslim minority in which, as a result
of the activism of certain groups, the terms homophobic and Muslim seem
to have become interchangeable, as have, by corollary, white and gay
(Haritaworn, Tauqir, and Erdem 2008).

Homonationalism stems from the broader term sexual nationalism, which

employs women's rights discourses as arguments against immigration or as
claims for civilizational superiority. Sexual nationalism can also be used to
instill feelings of unbelonging in descendants of immigrants who have
already become European citizens by condemning them back to cultural
roots assumed to be sexually intolerant, even though these new Europeans
have otherwise done everything else demanded of them for integration in
Europe. Sexually nationalist or homonationalist positions are often adopted
by political parties that otherwise would never endorse a pro-gay or pro-
women agenda: in Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world, conservative parties
have in bad faith sung the praises of women and homosexuals merely
because they believe sexual tolerance is the best platform from which to
pursue their more important policy goal of curtailing immigration (Mack
2017). Homonationalism coincides with otherwise progressive gestures of
inclusion, such as the repeal of the “don't ask, don't tell” policy in the
United States that used to keep gay and lesbian servicepeople closeted in
the military, or the promotion of gay and lesbian membership in the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF). As a result of this gesture of inclusion, the IDF is
able to “pinkwash” the occupation of Palestinian lands via the formation of
a public relations image palatable to Euro-American audiences (Stern
2017). Critics have pointed out, however, that these measures of inclusion
are conditioned on yet another exclusion: the gay or lesbian soldier is
accepted only because he or she is conditionally and relatively superior to
the current “enemy,” the proMected figure of the sexually perverse brown
terrorist, alternatively seen as too homosexual, in his sex-segregation
practices and effusive emotional displays, and too heterosexual, in his belief
in the radical difference between the sexes. Scholars have produced case
studies detailing the operation of homonationalism and sexual nationalism
as control mechanisms for keeping minorities in check—as seen in
Germany's relationship with its Turkish/Muslim communities (El-Tayeb
2011) and especially in France's relationship with its residents of North and
West African descent (Fassin 2010; Guénif-Souilamas and Macé 2004;
Mack 2017; Cervulle and Rees-Roberts 2010; Fernando 2014).

The Concept of the Gay International

Gay International is a term that originates in Joseph A. Massad's 2002
essay “Re-orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World,”
later included in his 2007 book Desiring Arabs. Massad argues that an
organized network of actors and institutions—spanning from
nongovernmental organizations to Mournalists to scholars—has made it its
work to identify (and make visible as “gay”) human subMects living in the
Global South who do not adhere to the homo-hetero binary, even if they do
practice same-sex sexuality. This identification from beyond does not take
into account whether the subMects involved want to be made publicly visible
or not. Ironically, the Gay International has much in common with the
Islamist groups it criticizes: they both want to publicly identify
homosexuals—the former to save them and the latter to condemn them.

Most problematic in the Gay International's value system is the

unquestioned primacy of visibility, transparency, and confession (of one's
sexuality). According to the principles put forth by Michel Foucault (1978),
these values are particular to a time and place: the emergence of
homosexual identity in Europe and the United States in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. Thus, a certain kind of gay universalism—
based on gay pride and sexual liberation narratives—takes itself as the
referent for all other possible homosexualities, extrapolating outward.
Sexual alterity (otherness) in other countries that does not match these
narratives is often deemed backward or primitive, no matter its comparative
scope or age. This can include sexualities that have a different relationship
to the public-private distinction, that dwell in clandestinity, that exist within
traditional marriage arrangements, that are temporarily embraced or
discarded or vary according to one's age, and, especially, that do not
determine one's sense of self. While many Euro-American observers have
pathologized this behavior using a variety of stigmatizing and medicalizing
terminologies (e.g., “schizophrenia,” “internalized self-hatred”), one can
also view in these nonhomonormative sexualities a sexual instability that
cannot be assimilated into gay universalism and, moreover, is indifferent to
how it is portrayed in the foreign press.
While homosexual identity has not been historically prevalent in the region,
Massad argues, neither has heterosexual identity, nor the homo-hetero
binary for that matter. While Desiring Arabs contains a literary archive of
the Arab literature of sexual dissidence in its fourth and fifth chapters, the
Gay International essay, which is often read in isolation, has proven the
most controversial, even netting accusations of homophobia and
promulgating conspiracy theories. However, a number of notable scholars
of postcolonial studies and gender studies (including Talal Asad, Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak, and Joan W. Scott [see University of Chicago Press
2007], as well as Jarrod Hayes [2016]) have cited the importance of
Massad's work. His findings have also been applied to diaspora contexts in
Europe, where the rhetoric of sexual nationalism has been the most
pervasive and the sexual demonization of Muslim immigrants and their
descendants has been the most effective (Mack 2017). A French anti-racist
activist group named the Movement of the Indigenous of the Republic made
waves in 2012 when, citing Massad, one of its spokespersons claimed that
the gay marriage campaign, which had succeeded in 2013, was not a
priority for the African, North African, and Caribbean populations of the
banlieues (multiethnic, working-class suburbs), even for those practicing
same-sex sexuality (BouteldMa 2012).

The concept of the Gay International has many critics. It can approach
victim blaming, as it seems to fault those in the Global South who adopt
gay identity—and are public about it—for their own oppression. This
argument has been met with a counterclaim: that it is the imperative of
identification imposed by the Gay International that endangers visibly
effeminate or nonpassing practitioners of same-sex sexuality, and that prior
to the Gay International's interventions and the globalization of sexual
identity categories there was no moral panic triggering homosexual witch
hunts (at least nowhere near the same extent). The debate around the Gay
International also has a strong class component, with some seeing in
Massad's book the claim that it is only the elite, bourgeois classes—often
educated abroad—in Arab and other Global South countries that express a
need for public gay visibility (Makarem 2009). Others have pointed out that
restricting one's view of local sexual cultures in the Global South in terms
of a “before” and “after” contact with the Gay International is problematic
for two reasons: one, because it romanticizes a golden age of purity,
authenticity, and isolation from cultural admixture; and two, because it
presents the globalization of sexual identity categories as a kind of
contagion (Abu-Odeh 2015; Kirchick 2007). One can retort that a critique
of the Gay International actually protects sexual diversity: many local
customs of same-sex sexuality have disappeared in the era of gay
universalism, are currently under pressure of erasure, or have been actively
suppressed from the historical record in postcolonial societies.

Euro-American Views on and Stigmatization

of Africa and the Middle East
This forced amnesia with regard to homoerotic heritage manifests in the
wake of a spreading Euro-American gay liberation movement that derives
gay universalism from its own image, a movement that has at times
steamrolled local sexual cultures that may not have the cultural capital,
funding, or will to survive and promote themselves as feasible alternatives
to gay universalism. This universalism threatens to supplant local sexual
cultures in the public imagination as the only reference for same-sex
sexuality. In the Arab world and Africa south of the Sahara, local sexual
cultures have at times been erased by compatriot Africans and Arabs. In a
complex historical process, indigenous populations, after encountering
Europeans in the colonial arena, measured their own cultures against
Europe's and found their own morally lacking (Massad 2007): many were
especially embarrassed about the ample traces of homosexuality that
European explorers and travel writers had seized on and emphasized
(Boone 1995). Thus, many countries “became” homophobic after contact
with Europe, rewriting their own histories so as to erase any trace of same-
sex eroticism. This mirrors a time line of reactions Neville Hoad has
identified with regard to Africa. After a century of being faulted for their
“primitivity,” Africans elaborated homophobic responses that could be
taken as “reaction formation[s] in the psychoanalytic sense.” These reaction
formations cause Africans to take what was in the past considered Europe's
civilized morality (in which same-sex eroticism must be eradicated) and
assert it as organically local: “Anti-Western attacks on ‘homosexuality’ can
be seen as responses to these prior attributions of primitiveness, and as
reversals of the racist charge of retardation and/or degeneration.” At the
same time, “imperial ‘civilized’ sexual norms can remain in place and can
paradoxically be defended as authentically African” (Hoad 2007, 56–57).

Europe's current stigmatization of Africa and the Middle East as the center
of the homophobic world is historically ironic given that homophobic
Europe historically sourced the malady of homosexuality in the regions
from which it currently demands sexual tolerance. Up until the 1980s,
North Africa was a shelter for Americans and Europeans fleeing the sexual
intolerance of their home countries (Caraës and Fernandez 2003). Adding to
the historical irony, laws criminalizing sexuality in the Middle East and
North Africa region were often inherited from British and French legal
codes (Massad 2007). Similarly, in Africa south of the Sahara, current
official homophobic language echoes what was often heard during British
control of Uganda (Hoad 2007). The nascent gay or homophile American
press in the 1950s and 1960s portrayed Africa as more “liberal” in terms of
sexual and gender variance than the United States (Thompson 2017).

At first, discussions of homonationalism focused on the dynamics between

Europe/North America and the Middle East and North Africa region, but
more recently they have expanded to include the Global South and Africa
south of the Sahara, in particular. In the face of aspersions that homophobia
has always plagued the region, many African sexuality scholars and
activists have insisted that homophobia, not homosexuality, is an import to
the African continent. As with the Middle East and North Africa region,
some scholars have stated that homophobic campaigns increased only after
the infiltration of “Western” gay universalism, leading indigenous people to
persecute their own sexual minorities and accuse them of being
“Westernized,” even if they had never set foot abroad. In opposition to
being represented as foreign additions, Africans practicing same-sex
sexuality have stated their longtime connection to precolonial histories of
homosexuality and traditional kinship structures, thus claiming their
homosexuality and Africanness at the same time (Nyanzi 2013). Marc
Epprecht (2008) has shown that “heterosexual Africa” is itself an invention,
constructed over the last two centuries by a host of figures, from
anthropologists, colonial administrators, and ethnopsychologists to, more
recently, African elites and HIV/AIDS workers.

Uganda as Exemplar of Debates over

Homonationalism
A country of central importance to these ongoing debates on the African
continent has been Uganda. In 2009 David Bahati, a member of the
Ugandan parliament, introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which sought
to further criminalize consensual same-sex relations in the country that
were already forbidden by the penal code. This legal push eventually
culminated in the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014, which was invalidated
in the same year it was signed, officially on procedural grounds but
allegedly because of international pressure to cut off aid to the country. The
tabloidesque Ugandan newspaper Rolling Stone (not to be confused with
the American publication of the same title) had published the names of
rumored homosexuals in a move that attracted strong outside
condemnation. One prominent gay rights activist, David Kato (c. 1964–
2011), who had led a victorious campaign against the newspaper, was
assassinated, as recounted in the documentary film Call Me Kuchu (Wright
and Zouhali-Worrall 2012). Kapya J. Kaoma (2013) has argued that the US
Christian Right is responsible for homophobic violence in Africa. American
Christian groups, after failing to stop the progress of the gay rights
movement stateside, came to Africa south of the Sahara to preach against
homosexuality, and some people contend that they are primarily to blame
for the murderous campaigns of homophobic attacks that followed. The
growing alarm around the “spread” of homosexuality in Africa south of the
Sahara was fomented by American missionary and evangelical activity that
sought to convince Ugandans that homosexuality was a threat to the
traditional African family. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill was introduced
only a couple of months after a prominent antihomosexuality conference
organized by American evangelists. Scott Lively, an American evangelical
pastor, was the target of a lawsuit alleging crimes against humanity as a
direct result of his antigay activism in Uganda (Barry 2013).

Political speech invoking human rights also had a role to play in the
escalation of homophobia in Uganda. In 2011 Hillary Rodham Clinton
(1947–), then serving as US secretary of state, delivered an influential
speech to the United Nations asserting that gay rights are human rights:
though outwardly laudable, this equation actually imperiled humanitarian
aid to certain impoverished countries by conditioning that aid on gay rights
records. During Clinton's tenure as secretary of state under US president
Barack Obama (1961–), she called for foreign assistance to be used to
“[promote] the protection of LGBT rights” (Clinton 2011; Obama 2011).
David Cameron (1966–), the UK prime minister, threatened to stop aid to
governments that ban homosexuality, while Sweden, Denmark, and Norway
cut off or redirected aid to Uganda in the wake of the Anti-Homosexuality
Bill's passage (Wahab 2016). Indeed, personalities from Obama to Clinton
to former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper (1959–) were perceived
as champions of gay rights in Uganda when they spoke out against
homophobic legislation there, even though they had yet to express support
for same-sex marriage in their own countries (2012 for Obama and 2013 for
Clinton), and in Harper's case, never did (Bowers 2012; Sherman 2015;
Wahab 2016). This selective liberalism in which gay rights can be
supported abroad while denied at home is a key feature of sexual
nationalism (although some may say one cannot compare the denial of gay
marriage with homophobic persecution).
While many queer activists have expressed dismay that a gay rights agenda
would be used to perpetuate imperialist domination, the Euro-American gay
press in its maMority supported punitive measures against Uganda,
notwithstanding calls from African activists for caution and restraint.
According to thinkers such as Puar (2007), this turn is made possible by the
notion that, in the era of homonationalism, gays and lesbians in general
have been depoliticized by their very inclusion in the national mainstream
and are thus more likely to support nationalistic measures and superpower
displays of might. Even if successful in stopping homophobic legal
measures, social change in Africa that is brought about by outside
intervention and pressure does little to substantially alter homophobic
beliefs. It is the average citizen who stands to see in such displays of force
even more reasons to defend homophobia, not for its alignment with
African customs but rather as a wedge of resistance against Western
interference.

Some have argued that in Uganda and elsewhere on the continent the move
to criminalize homosexuality was not purely motivated by homophobia.
One version of events sees in the recourse to homophobia an attempt to
salvage agency against neoimperialist forces that sought to impose ideal
social constellations from without: thus, homophobia was merely the form a
broader cultural anti-imperialism took. As scholars such as Meredith L.
Weiss (2013) have argued, Ugandan members of parliament and Mournalists
took part in a process of homophobic “countermobilization” that sought to
stop the social change observed in Euro-America from being reproduced in
Africa. This process was preemptive in nature because sexual minorities in
Uganda had not yet massively campaigned for these rights prior to being
persecuted. In this way, because of transnational networks of influence and
globalization—involving pressure from international nongovernmental
organizations, politicians, and evangelists—a crisis around homosexuality
erupted where none had existed before, making this not so much a Ugandan
problem as an international reckoning between antigay and pro-gay forces
in the United States. This escalation was fomented not Must by politicians
but by the European media as well, and in particular the BBC, which aired
two stigmatizing programs in 2011: The World's Worst Place to Be Gay?
(a profile of Uganda) and a debate titled Is Homosexuality Un-African?
(Wahab 2016).

In a comprehensive summary of the Uganda controversy that recaps its

maMor flashpoints, Amar Wahab (2016) identifies the dual prisms through
which most commentators have conceptualized the escalation around same-
sex desire in Africa, phrased in the form of statements ostensibly
contradictory but actually quite alike: “homosexuality is un-African” versus
“homophobia is un-African.” Both phrasings adopt viewpoints that
themselves could be seen as un-African: the first because it reflects the
evangelist-driven homophobia that had not existed prior to missionary
intervention, the second because it ignores the way in which homophobia
itself has become a favored African tool for signifying anti-imperialism.
Using South Africa as an example, Jane Bennett (2015) asserts that viewing
whatever happens in Africa as the result of entanglements with the United
States causes one to ignore local contexts and happenings on the ground:
she claims that US debates around same-sex marriage had less impact on
attitudes in South Africa than one might think, and in the end she attributes
more influence to controversies about marriage in South Africa itself.
Finally, Robert W. Kuloba asks, after all the rhetorical posturing about
homosexuality being a foreign import (despite its longtime implantation in
African customs), whether the entire process of asking whether
homosexuality or homophobia is African has instead fragilized African
identities overall. Just “who is an African in the post-colonial cultural
sense?” he wonders (Kuloba 2016, 6). In the end, one of the greatest
casualties of homonationalism, on both the African continent and in the
Arab world, is the innocence of identity formation, unrestricted and free
from critical pressure or intervention.

SEE ALSO Activism in Africa South of the Sahara; Anthropology in Africa

South of the Sahara; Coming-Out/Coming-In Discourses in the Middle
East; The Gay International and Mideast LGBTQI Organizations; Uganda

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Homosexual Acts in Shariʿa
NICOLE FARES
Independent scholar
Alpharetta, GA

Perspectives on same-sex sexual activity in Islamic sacred

texts.

Despite some claims that homosexuality is a Western phenomenon (Abu

Khalil 1997), same-sex relations of many varieties are an inherent part of
Islamic history and culture (Murray and Roscoe 1997). In the 1990s and
into the new century there was a rise in literature and academic works on
Islam and homosexuality by activists, academics, and self-identified
LGBTQ Muslims, which has contributed to the discussion on
homosexuality among Muslims in diverse contexts (Habib 2010; Murray
and Roscoe 1997; Kugle 2010). Contemporary Muslim scholars have
argued that humans are heterosexual by nature; therefore, homosexuality is
a sinful and perverse deviation from nature (Abu-Saud 1990). And although
they differ in their methods of penalizing and punishing individuals who
have taken part in homosexual acts, Islamic schools of thought and
Murisprudence all consider homosexuality to be unlawful (Minwalla et al.
2005).

Medieval Arabic erotic writings contain a wealth of homosexual practices,

descriptions, and precise sexual terminologies, such as sahq/sahiqat
(lesbianism/lesbians), mutazarrifat (elegant courtly ladies-lovers), liwat/luti
(active male homosexuality/homosexual), ubnah (passive male
homosexuality), and maʾbun (passive male homosexual) (Amer 2009).
However, no vocabularies that exist in these texts are attributed to
bisexuality, heterosexuality, or sexuality specifically.

Homosexuality in the Qurʾan and Hadiths

The story of Lut (Lot in Hebrew scriptures), which is referenced seven
times in the Qurʾan (Wafer 1997), is often used to Mustify Islam's reMection
of homosexuality (Minwalla et al. 2005). In this story, God sends two
angels to Lut, who offers them shelter in his house, but others in the area
surround Lut's house and demand that the visitors come out so that they
“might know them,” suggesting gang rape (de la Huerta 1999). God's
subsequent annihilation of the people of Lut is interpreted as a consequence
of their sexual practices and homosexuality (Jamal 2001). Yet, the Qurʾan,
though it narrates this divine punishment for Sodom and Gomorrah, does
not specify any earthly punishment for homosexuality (Akyol 2015). And
while many Islamic thinkers deem homosexuality a form of adultery, and
therefore punishable on Earth, others argue that homosexuality cannot be
considered adultery because the participants cannot produce offspring as a
result, and therefore it must not be punishable (Akyol 2015). In addition,
many contemporary scholars and theologians have questioned this
traditional interpretation of the story of Lut and have put forth alternative
renditions. For instance, scholars have argued that the sins of the people of
Lut were numerous and that the Qurʾan does not identify specific sins in
reference to their punishment (Jamal 2001). Some suggest that inhospitality
to strangers, for instance, was a reason for the punishment (Kahn 1989;
Jung and Smith 1993; de la Huerta 1999). Some also argue that what is
condemned in the story of Lut is not sexual orientation but sexual
aggression (Akyol 2015). It was the hadiths, scholars have argued, that
influenced interpretations of the Qurʾan by making a correlation between
the story of Lut and homosexuality exclusively (Jamal 2001).

Hadiths, which are collections of sayings attributed to the prophet

Muhammad separate from the Qurʾan, declare as punishable any act
deemed insulting to Islam, including apostasy, heresy, and homosexuality.
But while the hadiths are clear in their condemnation of homosexual acts,
many liberal Muslims challenge the authenticity in the chain of
transmission (isnad) of the texts themselves (Minwalla et al. 2005).
Although traditional orthodox Muslims view the hadiths as the true words
of Muhammad, others argue that the texts were written down nearly two
centuries after the death of the Prophet; therefore, their authenticity is
questionable.

As for the Qurʾan itself, there are divergent understandings and

interpretations of the text, and of Islam's position toward homosexuality.
Conservative thinkers consider the Qurʾan to be “very explicit in its
condemnation of homosexuality, leaving scarcely any loophole for a
theological accommodation of homosexuals in Islam” (Duran 1993, 181),
while others who have relied on a more semantic analysis of the Qurʾan
posit that its obMections to homosexuality are comparable to its obMections to
heterosexual activities and nonsexual indiscretions (Jamal 2001). According
to Amreen Mohamed Jamal and Omar Minwalla and colleagues, the Qurʾan
does not specify a clear stance on the matter of homosexuality and
homosexual behavior and does not mention a specific punishment for
homosexual acts or indicate that such behavior must be punished (Jamal
2001; Minwalla et al. 2005).

Liwat vs. Sihaq in Shariʿa Punishment

The Arabic terms for lesbianism (sahq, sihaq, and sihaqa) and lesbian
(sahiqa, sahhaqa, and musahiqa) describe a behavior and an action
primarily, not an identity or emotional attachment: “The root of these words
(s-h-q) means ‘to pound’ (as in spices) or ‘to rub,’ so that lesbians (sahiqat),
like the Greek tribades, are literally those who engage in a pounding or
rubbing behavior or who make love by pounding or rubbing” (Amer 2009,
216). Lut, or liwat, on the other hand, is loosely translated as sodomy, and
defined by some as the anal penetration of either a male or a female, and by
others as the anal penetration of a male only (Omar 2012). In the Qurʾan,
sihaq is not mentioned at all, while in medieval Arabic literature, lesbians
are not considered to be guilty of sin, and the act of lesbianism is not
considered a crime and therefore not punishable (Amer 2009). Sahar Amer
argues that the surprisingly positive and accepting attitude toward
lesbianism in Islamic and medieval Arab literature is a result of the general
commendation of heterosexual practice and eroticism in Arab and
Islamicate discourses (discourses within which Muslims are culturally
dominant but not specifically with the religion of Islam). Sexuality within
Islamicate discourses is explicitly celebrated and positioned at the center of
religious piety. Sex is not a sin in Islam, and sexual desire is considered
“both licit and desirable” (Amer 2009, 222). Paradise is described in sexual
terms in the Qurʾan, which emphasizes the importance of physical pleasure
(Bouhdiba 1985; Khatibi 1983, 2019).

Sihaq, unlike liwat, is barely discussed in Islamic Muridical literature, and

the Qurʾan does not mention it at all. However, some consider the term al-
fahisha (sin), present in the Qurʾan (4:15–16), to be a reference to sihaq.
For most Murists, however, sihaq does not fall under zina (adultery) “because
the phallus is one of the necessary tools by which intercourse and zina are
accomplished. Two females cannot be punished for an act that they are not
physically capable of performing” (Omar 2012, 240). Therefore, because
penetration is considered to take place only when the penis of a man
penetrates the vagina or the anus of a partner, the act of sihaq is deemed
unpunishable, at least with hadd (Qurʾanic punishment), as in the case of
zina. The couple engaged in sihaq must be disciplined, but not executed, for
although the sinful act of sihaq violates God's divine order to protect one's
private parts, the Qurʾan does not indicate any specific punishment for this
act, and therefore hadd punishment does not apply (Omar 2012). Instead,
couples engaging in lesbian activities are subMect to taʿzir and therefore are
disciplined and made to repent. Hadd, or hudud, is punishment fixed in the
Qurʾan and hadith for six crimes considered to be against the rights of God:
theft (amputation of the hand), illicit sexual relations (death by stoning, or
100 lashes), making unproven accusations of illicit sex (eighty lashes),
drinking intoxicants (eighty lashes), apostasy (death or banishment), and
highway robbery (death). Taʿzir is punishment for crimes not as serious as
those requiring hadd punishments, despite being perhaps similar in nature,
or those for which specific punishments have not been fixed by the Qurʾan.

The principal and most condemned sexual sins in theological Islamic

discourse are adultery (zina) and homosexuality (liwat). Adultery in Islam
is defined as vaginal intercourse between a man and a woman who is
neither his wife by law nor his concubine (Amer 2009). Adultery is
therefore firmly condemned in the Qurʾan and the sunna (the early Islamic
legal tradition) and has, to some extent, contributed to the acceptance of
female homosexuality in Islamicate societies: “Know that lesbianism
insures against social disgrace, while coition is forbidden except through
marriage” (Ibn Falītah 1977, 19). Despite there being no specific
punishment or condemnation of homosexuality in the Qurʾan, Islamic
Murisprudents all generally regard homosexuality as one of the maMor sins,
kabaʾir (Adang 2003). There is disagreement, however, among the
traditional schools of Islamic legal thought (madhahib) regarding the proper
earthly punishment for homosexuality, or liwat (Adang 2003; Rowson
1991; Kugle 2010; El-Rouayheb 2005).

How are punishments determined, then, with regard to male homosexuality

(liwat) and lesbianism (sihaq), given that punishment is severe for the
former and more lenient for the latter? In hadiths, when it comes to
punishing those who engage in sodomy, usually the main concern is public
order, whether in regard to insubordination to God (fisq) or disorder (fitna)
(Mezziane 2008). Sara Omar's examination of the differences in legal
treatment and severity of punishment of liwat and sihaq revealed complex
factors that ultimately influence Murists' legal determinations in punishing
liwat and sihaq in Muslim countries: the punishment of illicit sex between a
man and a woman (adultery and fornication) is used as a paradigm for
punishing liwat and sihaq; sexual intercourse is perceived as an exclusively
male act of phallic penetration; and the partner's legal status within the
social hierarchy affects the outcomes of Murisprudential discussions of illicit
sexual intercourse and the severity of the punishments. Although these three
factors Omar lists have contributed to the establishment of legal Munctions in
relation to liwat and sihaq, the legal treatment of the two issues in Muslim
countries is rooted in the Qurʾan's story of Lut and in hadiths, both of which
have become associated with the acts of liwat and sihaq: “Juristic
disagreements over the semantics and definitions of these three factors
extended to the treatment of liwãt and sihaq and, ultimately, became
normative doctrine” (2012, 225; emphasis added).

Zina is legally defined as strictly the act of sexual intercourse with a person
who is not one's spouse or (a man's) lawfully acquired concubine, and it is
usually punishable by flogging or lapidation, depending on the person's
state of ihsan (spiritual purity and good earthly standing). An individual's
ihsan is Mudged by the Murists; however, the details are contested and debated
within various madhabs, or different schools of thought within Islamic
Murisprudence (Omar 2012). Hadith is as direct in its condemnation of zina,
which constitutes illicit sexual intercourse, as of a male's illicit vaginal
intercourse with a woman. Punishment of zina is decided according to hadd,
which are punishments of certain acts that have been sanctioned in the
Qurʾan and therefore forbidden for being crimes against religion. What
remains contested, however, is whether zina also encompasses anal
penetration, or whether it refers strictly to unlawful vaginal penetration.
Among those who define zina as unlawful vaginal penetration and liwat as
anal penetration of both the male-male and male-female type, some also
conclude that male anal penetration is not zina and therefore does not
require hadd punishment; instead, individuals who have engaged in liwat
must be punished through taʿzir (Shalakany 2008). Morally, however, and
despite this distinction, homosexual acts remain reprehensible and
prohibited. Some also ground in semantics the Mustification for the lack of
punishment, or the reduction of the severity of the punishment, of female
and male homosexuality, claiming that because two words are used to
describe two different acts, these two acts must be distinct from each other:
“The difference in words is proof of difference in meaning” (Omar 2012,
230). The Murists who punish couples who have engaged in liwat with the
hadd punishment because they view liwat as a type of zina often quote the
following sentence from the hadiths: “If a man approaches [e.g., penetrates]
another man, then both of them have committed zina” (quoted in Omar
2012, 236).

The Maliki school (followed especially in North Africa), which adopts a

rather strict approach to hadith in its punishment of zina and liwat,
considered male homosexuality an offense graver than zina and thus
meriting the most severe penalty—namely, stoning to death for both
partners (Amer 2009). This school, however, permitted homosexual
practices between a man and his male slaves (Amer 2009). The Shafiʿi
school (followed especially in Egypt and Syria), in its punishments of zina,
liwat, and sihaq, distinguishes between married and unmarried individuals
and between active and passive partners. If married, the partners are stoned
to death, and if unmarried, they receive a lashing. The Hanafi school
(followed especially in Iraq and the Farsiand Turkish-speaking regions of
the Islamic world) is considered one of the more liberal schools of Islamic
thought. This school assigns a less severe taʿzir punishment, which is also
meant to reform and discourage others. Taʿzir punishments usually take the
form of ten lashes and incarceration for a short period until the partners
repent (Amer 2009).

Almost all punishments distinguish between liwat and sihaq; the latter is
generally deemed a less serious offense than the former, and the least
serious form of zina. Like liwat, sihaq elicits various types of punishments:
some theologians prescribe 100 lashes, others prescribe the least severe
taʿzir punishment, or no punishment at all (Amer 2009). In most legal texts
of Islamic Murisprudence (fiqh), sihaq is not consistently addressed. Kissing,
caressing, intercrural intercourse (between the thighs), and similar acts are
also considered dishonorable and punishable offenses but are not subMect to
the above-mentioned penalties.

Homosexuality in Middle Eastern Countries

Today
Official state scholars from the Hanafi school of Murisprudence
decriminalized homosexuality during the mid-nineteenth-century Tanzimat
reforms of the Ottoman Empire (Kazi 2011), so punishment for
homosexuality was abolished during that period. This is an example of how
social contexts and the experiences of classical Muslim Murists have
contributed to the hermeneutical analysis and understanding of the Qurʾan
and hadiths. It is as a result of such a cultural context that some Murists
interpreted references to al-zaniya (a female adulterer) in the Qurʾan
metaphorically rather than literally, and interpreted zina in the hadiths as a
metaphor for sin as opposed to a more literal reference to adultery or
fornication (Omar 2012). Jurists' differing readings of the legal processes,
logic, and social contexts have helped to illuminate the methods of
reasoning and the various debates and disagreements between scholars
concerning the legal treatment of male and female homosexuality. Such an
approach in turn impacts other issues where the social and semantic shape
the legal debate, such as issues of gender, feminism, and sexuality. Varying
interpretations of homosexuality in Islamic religious and legal texts are also
significant for the cross-cultural history of sexuality, for they also challenge
contemporary Western and Eastern assumptions about gender and sexuality
(Amer 2009).

There are ongoing debates about interpretation of the Qurʾan and hadiths, as
well as about the treatment of homosexuals in Middle Eastern countries
today. As in other dominant religions, there are varying understandings and
analyses of Islam's position with regard to homosexuality. This
demonstrates the extent of the ambiguity of the Qurʾan's stance on the topic
of homosexuality, be it in terms of activity or lifestyle (Jamal 2001).
Homosexuality as an act is condemned in the Qurʾan in association with
people of Lut, but its punishments are not specified. Representations and
data on the social and legal conditions of lesbians in the Middle East are yet
to be as consistently thematized and addressed as Arab male homosexual
realities and rights have been. In the Middle East, homosexual acts remain
illegal and punishable in many countries and territories, including Morocco,
Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, the
United Arab Emirates, and Gaza. Punishment for homosexuality can range
from the death penalty—as in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, and
Afghanistan—to imprisonment, as in Bahrain, where the sentence can
exceed ten years (Itaborahy and Zhu 2013).

Some Murists and thinkers, such as Abu Hanifa (699–767) and Ibn Hazm
(994–1064), did not employ qiyas (a method of deducing laws on matters
not explicitly covered by the Qurʾan or sunna without relying on
unsystematic opinion) in the realm of hudud, and refused to use zina as a
model for liwat and sihaq. They concluded, as many others do today, that
individuals who engage in male homosexual and lesbian acts must be
punished not through hadd but through the less harsh form of punishment,
taʿzir. Those who did draw an analogy between zina and liwat, and those
who support this stance today, are unable to apply this parallelism to zina
and sihaq. Therefore, Muslim male homosexuals continue to suffer severe
hadd punishments, including execution by various means (Omar 2012).
Young boys and individuals deemed intellectually disabled are not held
legally accountable for homosexuality or sodomy, regardless of whether
they were passive or active partners in the sexual acts (Omar 2012). As for
women, although they receive a less severe punishment than the hadd
inflicted on their male counterparts (mostly because they do not possess
phalluses), their punishments are in many cases “contingent upon the legal
position of her penetrator, rather than her own, based on the semantic
argument that a woman is mazníýn bihã rather than zãniya,” meaning a
woman is the defiled rather than the defiler (Omar 2012, 255).
Shahid Dossani contends that “the roots of gay intolerance seem to be more
sociological and cultural than religious” (1997, 236). While contemporary
mainstream Islam officially condemns homosexuality (Minwalla et al.
2005), there is a growing movement of progressive-minded Muslim
individuals, scholars, and Murists who view Islam as an evolving religion
and who reinterpret the words of the Qurʾan and repeatedly debate its
application to modern events and laws affecting Muslims internationally.

SEE ALSO Queer Names and Identity Politics in the Arab World;
Religion and Same-Sex Behaviors: Islam

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Adang, Camilla. “Ibn Ḥazm on Homosexuality: A Case-Study of Ẓāhirī

Legal Methodology.” Al-Qanṭara: revista de estudios árabes 24, no. 1
(2003): 5–31.

Akyol, Mustafa. “What Does Islam Say about Being Gay?” New York
Times, 28 July 2015.
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islam-say-about -being-gay.html

Ali, Kecia. Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qurʾan,

Hadith, and Jurisprudence. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006.

Amer, Sahar. “Medieval Arab Lesbians and Lesbian-Like Women.”

Journal of the History of Sexuality 18, no. 2 (2009): 215–236.
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Routledge, 1985.

De la Huerta, Christian. Coming Out Spiritually: The Next Step. New York:
Putnam, 1999.

Dossani, Shahid. “Being Muslim and Gay.” In Que(e)rying Religion: A

Critical Anthology, edited by Gary David Comstock and Susan E. Henking,
236–237. New York: Continuum, 1997.

Duran, Khalid. “Homosexuality and Islam.” In Homosexuality and

World Religions, edited by Arlene Swidler, 181–197. Valley Forge, PA:
Trinity Press International, 1993.

El-Rouayheb, Khaled. Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World,

1500–1800. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Habib, Samar. Islam and Homosexuality. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010.

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of Coition. Translated by Adnan Jarkas and Salah Addin Khawwam.
Toronto: Aleppo, 1977.

Itaborahy, Lucas Paoli, and Jingshu Zhu. State-Sponsored Homophobia

Report. 8th ed. Geneva: International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and
Intersex Association, 2013.
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13.pdf

Jamal, Amreen Mohamed. “The Story of Lot and the Qurʾan's Perceptions
of the Morality of Same-Sex Sexuality.” Journal of Homosexuality 41
(2001): 1–88.

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Challenge. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.
Kahn, Yoel H. “Judaism and Homosexuality: The Traditionalist/Progressive
Debate.” Journal of Homosexuality 18, nos. 3–4 (1989): 47–82.

Kazi, Tehmina. “The Ottoman Empire's Secular History Undermines

Shariʿa Claims.” Guardian (London), 7 October 2011.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/oct/07/ottoman-
empire-secular-history-sharia

Khatibi, Abdelkebir. La Blessure du Nom Propre [The wound of the proper

name]. Paris: Denoel, 1986.

Khatibi, Abdelkebir. Plural Maghreb. Translated by P. Burcu

Yalim. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.

Kugle, Scott SiraM al-Haqq. Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on

Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims. Oxford: Oneworld Publications,
2010.

Mezziane, Mohammed. “Sodomie et masculinité chez les Muristes

musulmans du IXe au XIe siècle” [Sodomy and masculinity among Muslim
Murists of the ninth to the eleventh centuries]. Arabica 55, no. 2 (2008):
276–306.

Minwalla, Omar, B. R. Simon Rosser, Jamie Feldman, and Christine A.

Varga. “Identity Experience among Progressive Gay Muslims in North
America: A Qualitative Study within al-Fatiha.” Culture, Health, and
Sexuality 7, no. 2 (2005): 113–128.

Murray, Stephen O., and Will Roscoe, eds. Islamic Homosexualities:

Culture, History, and Literature. New York: New York University
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(Sodomy) and Sihaq (Tribadism) in Islamic Jurisprudence (8th–15th
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Rowson, Everett K. “The Categorization of Gender and Sexual Irregularity
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York: Routledge, 1991.

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Paris: Max Milo, 2012.
Human Rights
DOMINIC MCGOLDRICK
Professor of International Human Rights Law
University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

The struggle for recognition of LGBTQ rights from a

transnational perspective.

In theory, LGBTQI persons have human rights simply because they are
humans; they are born free and equal in dignity and rights (OHCHR 2012).
Yet, reports from all regions of the world evidence violence, repression,
exclusion, and stigmatization against individuals because of their sexual
orientation, commonly grounded in discrimination (Lee and Ostergard
2017). Indeed, in 2013 the United Nations (UN) secretary-general Ban
Kimoon stated that discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and
gender identity is “one of the great, neglected human rights challenges of
our time” (United Nations Secretary-General 2013). The explanation for
this apparent divergence between theory and practice lies in the huge
variance among states or regions on the broad question of whether
homosexuality should be accepted or reMected by society (Pew Research
Center 2013). Strong public opposition is particularly linked to tradition,
culture, religiosity, and relative poverty. Claims of LGBTQI rights have
confronted long-accepted assertions of freedom of religion and the
autonomy of religious organizations (Johnson and Vanderbeck 2014). A
large number of states from different regions do not accept that LGBTQI
persons have the particular aspects of the human rights they claim. In
addition, many states reMect any suggestion of a prohibition on sexual
orientation/gender identity discrimination. Thus, for LGBTQI persons, their
claim to recognition and acceptance of their identity is at issue because of
fundamental divisions on whether sexual orientation discrimination is
prohibited as a matter of human rights law at all. There have been legal and
policy successes for advocates of LGBTQI rights (Gallo et al. 2014;
Johnson 2013), but as with any human rights movement, there are setbacks
stemming from political and social obstacles (Altman and Symons 2016).
Many of these obstacles arise from the fact that different states take
diametrically opposite positions on the question of whether the rights
LGBTQI persons are claiming are “existing” or “new” rights (Roseman and
Miller 2011).

International Mechanisms
Although there is a long history of the persecution of LGBTQI+ persons
and homophobic/transphobic legislation, the history of engagement by the
UN is very short (McGill 2014). Since 2003 the UN General Assembly has
repeatedly called attention to the killings of persons because of their sexual
orientation or gender identity through its resolutions on extraMudicial,
summary, or arbitrary executions. In June 2011 the Human Rights Council,
by a vote of 23 to 19, with three abstentions, adopted Resolution 17/19, the
first UN resolution on sexual orientation and gender identity. It expressed
“grave concern” at violence and discrimination against individuals based on
their sexual orientation and gender identity. Surprisingly, it was not until
2011 that the first official UN report on sexual orientation and gender
identity discrimination was prepared by the Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)—Discriminatory Laws and
Practices and Acts of Violence against Individuals Based on Their Sexual
Orientation and Gender Identity (UN Doc A/HRC/19/41, 17 November
2011). The report's findings formed the basis of a panel discussion at a
meeting of the Human Rights Council in March 2012. This was the first
time a UN intergovernmental body had held a formal debate on the subMect.
An updated report was presented in 2015 with a view to sharing good
practices and ways to overcome violence and discrimination in application
of existing international human rights law and standards (UN Doc
A/HRC/29/23, 4 May 2015).

UN Special Rapporteur
A maMor political and institutional development was the creation by the
Human Rights Council of an independent UN special expert on protection
against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender
identity (Resolution 32/2, 30 June 2016). Member states on the council
were deeply split over the appointment, and for the first time ever, there was
a series of votes in the General Assembly in an attempt to reverse it on the
grounds that sexual orientation and gender identity has no clear basis in
international human rights law. The first independent expert, Vitit
Muntarbhorn (Thailand), was appointed in September 2016, and he was
succeeded by Victor Madrigal-Borloz (Costa Rica) in January 2018. The
expert's mandate includes implementing international instruments, with
identification of good practices and gaps; promoting awareness of the
violence and discrimination issue, and linking with root causes; engaging,
consulting, and cooperating with states and other stakeholders; identifying
multiple, intersecting, and aggravated forms of violence and discrimination;
and supporting international cooperation and related services to assist
national efforts.

Advocacy
Advocacy for the human rights of LGBTQI persons has aligned itself with
nondiscrimination campaigns and social movements based on more
established grounds, such as race, gender, and minority status. Historically,
that advocacy proceeded by focusing on the interpretation and application
of existing substantive rights obligations binding on state parties to human
rights treaties, rather than arguing for the recognition of new human rights
and new human rights instruments. The implicit assumption was that
identification of sexual orientation and gender identity issues in a human
rights discourse within existing mechanisms and institutions was a
necessary, if not sufficient, condition for having a positive impact on the
lives of those concerned.

For LGBTQI Human Rights

The central issue of the debate in normative terms has been whether
discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity should be
considered on a par with such established grounds as racial or gender
discrimination. Those who support this view submit that human rights apply
to everyone, and therefore everyone has the right to a private life and a
family life. Provisions in international human rights instruments that
prohibit discrimination tend to follow the pattern of an open list and contain
a reference to “sex” and to “other status”; sexual orientation has then been
interpreted as falling into either or both of these categories. This is seen as
an application of the “living instrument” approach to the interpretation of
human rights treaties and as consistent with their obMect and purpose
(Toonen v. Australia [1994]). The final step is to argue that discrimination
on grounds of sexual orientation can be Mustified only by particularly serious
or weighty reasons. International human rights institutions, particularly the
European Court of Human Rights (Dudgeon v. UK [1981]; Johnson 2013),
UN human rights treaty bodies (Toonen v. Australia [1994]), and the Inter-
American Court of Human Rights (Atala Riffo and Daughters v. Chile
[2012]; Advisory Opinion OC-24 [2018]) have largely duplicated each
other's Murisprudence to reach these results. In 2006 a distinguished group of
international human rights experts adopted the Yogyakarta Principles on the
Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual
Orientation and Gender Identity (O'Flaherty and Fisher 2008). This is not a
UN instrument, but its intended effect was to apply existing international
human rights law standards to address the situation of LGBTQI people and
issues of intersexuality. The OHCHR, UN Special Procedures, UN human
rights treaty bodies, and the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human
Rights have all referenced the Yogyakarta Principles.
 © ARCHIVE PL/ALAMΥ
Logo for the United Nations Campaign for LGBT Equality. In 2013 the United
Nations introduced the “Free and Equal” initiative to promote the fair and equal
treatment of LGBT persons worldwide through social media feeds, videos, and fact
sheets.

Against LGBTQI Human Rights

States that oppose the recognition of LGBTQI rights as human rights, such
as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Uganda, and Botswana, have tended to
simply reverse the arguments relating to interpretation and application.
They have not been able to deny that human rights apply to everyone, but
they stress that very few national, regional, or international provisions
prohibiting discrimination expressly refer to “sexual orientation.” They
have criminalized same-sex relationships, which they view as not protected
by the rights to private or family life. They reMect the view that sexual
orientation falls under “sex” or “other status,” regarding such an
interpretation as going beyond the permissible limits of a purposive living
instrument approach to the interpretation of human rights treaties and as
inconsistent with their obMect and purpose. Even if such an interpretation of
“other status” was Mustifiable, these states reMect the view that such
differential treatment can be Mustified only by particularly serious or
weighty reasons. At best, a lower standard of reasonable and obMective
reasons is considered applicable. Or, conversely, these states argue that they
do have particularly serious or weighty reasons or reasonable and obMective
reasons that reflect their traditions, cultures, and/or religions. Finally, they
argue that the fact that some international human rights institutions have
copied each other's Murisprudence to reach the contrary result does not make
that result Mustifiable.

Culture and Tradition

 © ALAMY
An LGBTQ Public Awareness Campaign Poster in Lithuania Reads “It's a Human
Right.” This poster was sponsored Mointly by Amnesty International and Lithuania's
national LGBT rights organization, demonstrating the sort of international and national
partnership between NGOs that is critical in LGBTQ advocacy.

Some African political and religious leaders have argued that gay rights and
homosexual identities are against African traditions, as well as against their
cultural and religious value systems. They also argue that African states
have a sovereign right to reMect what is seen as an imperialist or postcolonial
imposition of a particular human rights agenda by mainly Western states
that have sought to influence national sentiment via aid and trade
conditionality (Baisley 2015). They resent the hypocrisy that although the
United Kingdom presents itself as a global leader in LGBTQI rights, it was
under British colonial rule that homosexual acts were first criminalized in
many of its colonial territories around the world (Richards 2013). Many of
those colonial laws remain in force, for example in Bangladesh, Brunei,
India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Singapore, and Sri Lanka (Lennox and
Waites 2013). The argument of some African states and leaders is that
acceptance of homosexuality is a cultural import from the West (a claim
that has also been used to oppose the equality of women). This argument
disregards the fact that culture and tradition are neither static nor
monolithic. Nonheteronormative sexual orientations and gender identities
have existed in all world regions, including Africa. Some Asian countries,
such as Malaysia and Maldives, have made similar claims. They have
marginalized LGBTQI communities by promoting a narrow conception of
“Asian values” that emphasizes homogenous societies where the only
acceptable norm is heterosexuality. Yet even in regions that are broadly
negative on LGBTQI rights, there are strong pockets of resistance,
especially in Nepal, South Africa, Japan, and Taiwan. These arguments
based on culture and tradition are not confined to Africa and Asia; they are
also invoked in central and eastern Europe and parts of the Russian
Federation (Trappolin et al. 2012). It is notable that both sides of the culture
argument have utilized the same paragraph of the 1993 Vienna Declaration
and Programme of Action of the World Conference on Human Rights (UN
Doc. A/CONF.157/23, para 5, 25 June 1993) to support their understanding
of human rights law. One side emphasizes the “various historical, cultural,
and religious backgrounds” that must be borne in mind, while the other
points to the “duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and
cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental
freedoms. ”

NGOs
Awareness of LGBTQI rights as human rights can promote rights activism
at the local and national levels. There are an enormous number of very
active LGBTQI nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) nationally,
regionally, and internationally. NGOs have played their part in advocating
gay rights, although sustained efforts had to be made to persuade national
and international human rights NGOs to take on sexual orientation issues as
part of their agendas. A contemporary difficulty is that some feminist
organizations have concerns that support for trans organizations can
undermine the uniqueness of women's rights. OutRight Action International
(formerly known as International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights
Commission), based in the United States, is a leading international
organization dedicated to human rights advocacy on behalf of people who
experience discrimination or abuse on the basis of their actual or perceived
sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression (Thoreson 2014).
Particularly important in strategic terms was recognition of LGBTQI by
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as the so-called
gatekeepers of the NGO movement, that is, dominant NGOs that police the
boundaries of political expression of a given issue forum (Mertus 2007;
Linde 2017). Transgender and intersex NGOs have relatively shorter
histories. In the United States, the National Center for Transgender Equality
was founded only in 2003.

It is critical for campaigners against sexual orientation discrimination that

they are supported by vibrant NGOs as well as the civil society actors and
the civil space they occupy. Financial and human resources are almost
always limited. The use of modern communication methods—particularly
videos, films, images on the internet, and contacts via social media—allows
NGOs and civil society actors to become established more easily and to
communicate more effectively and efficiently. Although cohesive national
advocacy is growing in strength, in many states that oppose LGBTQI rights
as human rights, NGOs face restrictions and repression. As of 2017, in
about twenty-five states there were barriers to the formation, establishment,
or registration of LGBTQI-related NGOs. Most are in Africa and Asia.
These laws limit civil society participation, as well as NGOs' abilities to
bring their issues into the wider public domain and be included at the policy
and political levels.
International NGOs (INGOs) have taken a more significant role in
addressing problems regarding acceptance and accreditation in international
forums. The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex
Association is an international organization, with headquarters in Geneva,
that brings together more than 1,228 LGBTQI groups from 132 countries.
LGBTQI NGOs and INGOs continue to battle to be accredited with
international organizations and to subsequently get LGBTQI issues onto
their agendas.

Marches and Propaganda

Pride marches both celebrate LGBTQI culture and serve as political
demonstrations for more extensive legal rights. Marches have been held on
all continents and some have attracted millions of participants. State and
public support for and opposition to pride marches are another
contemporary indicator of attitudes to sexual orientation discrimination.
Denial of permission to hold and restrictions on marches or assemblies
promoting gay rights have been understood as violating Articles 11
(freedom of assembly) and 14 of the European Convention on Human
Rights (Alekseyev v. Russia [2010]) and Article 21 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (freedom of assembly) (Alekseev v.
Russian Federation, UN Doc, CCPR/C/109/D/1873/2009). A recent trend
has been for states to consider or pass legislation banning “homosexual
propaganda,” particularly in relation to minors. In 2012 the UN Human
Rights Committee held that the Russian Federation had not shown that a
restriction on the right to freedom of expression in relation to “propaganda
of homosexuality”—as opposed to propaganda of heterosexuality or
sexuality generally—among minors was based on reasonable and obMective
criteria (Fedotova v. Russian Federation). In 2017 the European Court of
Human Rights held that a ban on promoting nontraditional sexual
relationships violated freedom of expression and the prohibition on
discrimination (Bayev v. Russian Federation). The legislative provisions in
question embodied a predisposed bias on the part of the heterosexual
maMority against the homosexual minority, and the government had not
offered convincing and weighty reasons Mustifying the difference in
treatment.

Key Indicators of LGBTQI Rights

Decriminalization There is a clear historic trend toward the
decriminalization of same-sex sexual activity. As of May 2017, seventy-two
states had criminalized consenting same-sex sexual activity between adults
in private. In eight of those states the death penalty is “allowed,” or there is
evidence that it occurs. In forty-five of the seventy-two states (twenty-four
in Africa, thirteen in Asia, six in the Americas, and two in Oceania), the law
is applied to women as well as men. From a practical perspective, achieving
moratoriums, not enforcing criminal laws, restricting the scope of
applicable offenses, and educating the public are all elements of the process
toward decriminalization. In 124 states there are no legal penalties for such
same-sex sexual activities.

Family Life and Personal Status In considering the question of whether

same-sex couples can establish a “family” for the purposes of the right to
“family life,” European and inter-American human rights bodies have not
ruled out extending the right to marry to two persons of the same sex but
have left the question to regulation by the national laws of the contracting
states (Schalk and Kopf v. Austria [2010]; Advisory Opinion OC-24
[2018]). Thus, the trend toward legalizing same-sex marriage at the national
level is an indicator of incremental support for nondiscrimination on
grounds of sexual orientation. The number of countries that have legalized
same-sex marriage is relatively small. As of May 2017, twenty-two states
recognized or provided for same-sex marriage. Such change has come
either on the basis of national court rulings or legislation (sometimes
following referendums). Same-sex marriage was approved by a referendum
in Ireland in 2015, and by a voluntary nationwide postal survey in Australia
in 2017. Conversely, some states have introduced or reinforced restrictions
on marriage. In Hungary in January 2013, a new constitution defined
marriage as a union between a man and a woman. In 2018 Bermuda was the
first Murisdiction in the world to reverse a law allowing same-sex marriage.
However, Bermuda's supreme court subsequently ruled that parts of the law
that banned same-sex marriages were unconstitutional. Same-sex marriage
is performed and recognized in England, Wales, and Scotland in 2018 but
not in Northern Ireland. In United States v. Windsor in 2013 the US
Supreme Court held by five votes to four that Section 3 of the federal
Defense of Marriage Act (1996), which defined marriage as the union of a
man and a woman, violated the Fifth Amendment's due process clause
insofar as certain tax laws discriminated against persons of the same sex
who were legally married under the laws of their state. In another historic
ruling of the Supreme Court, in Obergefell v Hodges (2015) a five to four
maMority held that the Fourteenth Amendment required states to license a
marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a same-sex
marriage licensed and performed out of state. However, the court was
bitterly divided, and neither the maMority nor the minority made any
reference to international human rights standards or Murisprudence.

As for recognition of status, same-sex couples are offered some rights of

marriage via civil partnerships, registered partnerships, or civil unions in
twenty-eight states. Twenty-six states or parts thereof, mostly in Europe and
the Americas, have Moint adoption laws. The only African state that
recognizes these rights is South Africa; the only state in Asia to do so is
Israel. Twenty-seven states allow for same-sex second parent adoption
(Carroll and Mendos 2017). The trend for all these indicators is toward
greater recognition of LGBTQI rights.

Immigration
States that recognize full marital rights or civil partnerships for same-sex
partners also usually extend to them the same immigration rights conferred
on heterosexual spouses. However, an increasing number of states have
decoupled the issues; they view the recognition of same-sex couples'
immigration rights as a logical requisite of application of nondiscrimination
and equal protection principles, even while they have been unwilling to
accept full legal recognition of same-sex unions or civil partnerships
(Wilets 2011). Recognition is normally on the same basis as heterosexual
spouses and, thus, may afford only limited temporary or provisional
residence and on a dependency basis.

In many parts of the world, there has been increased understanding and
recognition of individuals changing gender, but even progressive states
have been slow to deal with the legal and practical effects (Lease and
Gevisser 2017). The relative newness of the issue means that it is very
much an evolving area of human rights concern. Trans immigration, as
distinct from trans asylum (as in Avendano-Hernandez v. Lynch, 2015), is a
good example. Some states, such as Australia, allow passports that
acknowledge categories other than male and female, but most do not. Only
a small number of states (Argentina and Denmark) allow individuals to
change their gender category on their passports relatively easily; others
require new birth certificates as evidence of gender surgery. Many states do
not allow it at all. A host of practical immigration issues have also been
raised, including body scanners that misfire when gender-nonconforming
people go through them, pat-downs or strip searches as part of border
security policies, immigration to a country that allows same-sex marriage or
partnership, and immigration for the purpose of seeking gender-
reassignment surgery or other medical interventions. It has also been
acknowledged that trans and intersex persons held in immigration detention
may be at particular risk of abuse and mistreatment from other detainees
(Frankel 2016). In the United States, a significant number of transgender
immigrants are unable to obtain legal permission to migrate and, therefore,
arrive as undocumented immigrants, which can leave them in the same state
of perpetual uncertainty as other undocumented migrants (National Center
for Transgender Equality 2018).
Persecution on Grounds of Sexual
Orientation
LGBTQI asylum seekers and refugees face distinct vulnerabilities (UNHCR
2015). In addition to severe discrimination and violence in their countries of
origin, they are frequently subMect to continued harm while in forced
displacement. In the country of asylum, these harms may include: violence
and harassment by members of the asylum seeker and refugee community;
insensitive and inappropriate questioning at various stages of the refugee
status determination procedure; intolerance, harassment, and violence by
state and nonstate agents in countries of first asylum, undermining the
possibility of local integration as a durable solution; discrimination and
safety threats in accommodation, health care, and employment by state and
nonstate agents; and subMection to sexual and gender-based violence or
survival sex in forced displacement. Some protective Murisprudence on
persecution on grounds of sexual orientation has been developed in a
refugee context. In 2008 (updated in 2012), the UN High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) published its Guidelines on Claims to Refugee Status
Based on Sexual Orientation and/or Gender Identity within the context of
Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol Relating to the
Status of Refugees (HCR/GIP/12/01, 23 October 2012). In 2011 the
UNHCR estimated that at least forty-two states had granted asylum to
individuals with a well-founded fear of persecution owing to sexual
orientation or gender identity. Some national courts have held that
individuals could not be deported to a state where they would have to hide
their sexual indentity, or where there was, in general, a serious risk of
persecution on grounds of sexual orientation without that persecution
affecting any particular percentage of the population (Frank 2012).

Health Care
Nondiscrimination, in the context of the right to sexual and reproductive
health, encompasses the right of all persons to be fully respected for their
sexual orientation, gender identity, and intersex status. UN human rights
treaty bodies have stressed that human rights law proscribes any
discrimination in access to health care and underlying determinants of
health, as well as to means and entitlements for their procurement, on the
grounds of sexual orientation (Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, General Comment No. 22 [2016] on the right to sexual and
reproductive health). Approaching sexual orientation issues from the
standpoint of public health can be a good strategic move because states may
appreciate the long-term impact of the health issues on the rest of the
population. Although states may be reluctant to reform laws criminalizing
homosexuality, they may be willing, for example, to include men who have
sex with men in national HIV plans and consultation processes to
strengthen the effectiveness of national HIV responses. It is also important
to emphasize the historical importance of the HIV/AIDS issue. Its rise as a
global health issue gave greater visibility to LGBTQI struggles for
recognition. However, sexual orientation issues can also arise within the
health agenda, broadly understood. Emerging issues include so-called
bathroom bills—legislation that defines access, exclusively or inclusively,
to public toilets (restrooms) by transgender individuals—and the
regulations by world sporting bodies on athletes' testosterone limits to
comply with the female classification in sporting competitions.

Future of LGBTQI Rights

The struggle to achieve recognition for LGBTQI human rights parallels the
efforts to develop other existing rights or to gain recognition for “new
rights.” What appears to distinguish sexual orientation claims from other
rights claims has been the widespread political and legal opposition with
which they have been met, but a closer analysis reveals that state practice is
mixed and in a state of flux, even in the African and Southeast Asian
regions. In India in 2009 the high court in Koushal held that Section 377 of
the Indian penal code (on “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”),
insofar as it criminalized consensual sexual acts of adults in private,
violated Articles 21, 14, and 15 of the constitution. However, in 2013 this
was reversed by the Supreme Court in a Mudgment that was dismissive of
alleged discrimination toward sexual minorities and hostile to the “so-called
rights of LGBT persons.” In 2016 the Supreme Court decided to refer the
issue to a five-Mudge Constitution Bench for reconsideration. In 2017, in
Puttaswamy and Another v. Union of India and Another, the Supreme Court
recognized a “right to privacy” in the constitution and held that
“discrimination against an individual on the basis of sexual orientation is
deeply offensive to the dignity and self-worth of the individual” (quoted in
Madani 2017). In September 2018 India's Supreme Court decriminalized
same-sex sexual activity under Section 377. In China, attitudes toward
nonnormative sexual orientations and gender identities have moved from
taboo to tolerance. There are over 190 LGBTQI groups and organizations
with an online presence in China, but none appears to have NGO status. In
December 2014 a district court determined that the conversion therapy to
which a thirty-year-old man had been subMected was illegal and that
compensation should be paid; China had removed homosexuality from its
list of mental disorders in 2001. In 2018, in China's first transgender
employment discrimination case, an appeals court ruled that gender identity
and expression were protected under antidiscrimination laws, and that,
therefore, laborers should not be treated differently in the course of employ
because of their gender identity and expression.

Levels of dialogue, public education, training, and information on LGBTQI

issues are increasing. Time and visibility, aided by the greater tolerance of
younger persons and the ubiquitousness of the internet and social media,
may bring greater understanding and acceptance, as they have with other
grounds of nondiscrimination and identity, such as race, sex, and, more
recently, disability. However, history suggests that progress will be neither
quick nor linear (Ayoub 2016; Picq and Thiel 2015). Indeed, it is not even
inevitable.
SEE ALSO Adoption and Surrogacy in Europe; Adoption, Fostering, and
Surrogacy (International); African Commission on Human and Peoples'
Rights; Defense of Marriage Act (1996); Hate Crime Law and Policy in the
United States; Human Rights and Activism in Latin America; Human Rights
and Queer Arab Refugees; Human Rights Campaign; Human Rights in
Europe; Marriage, Same-Sex, in Taiwan; Marriage, Universal, in Europe;
Migration to Europe; Parenting Rights in North America; Pride Parades
and Marches; Refugees and Asylum in Africa; Russian Gay Propaganda
Law

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Human Rights and Activism in Latin America
MARÍA XIMENA DÁVILA
Researcher, Center for the Study of Law, Justice and Society
DeMusticia, Colombia

MARÍA MERCEDES GÓMEZ

Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology, Saint Mary's University,
Canada
Founding Member, Red Latinoamericana de Académicas/os del Derecho
(Red Alas)

The geopolitical context that defines the relationship between

LGBT activism and human rights in Latin America in the
twentieth century.

The control of gender and sexuality has been part of the normative
structures in Latin America since colonial times. Based on the legal
subordination of women in marriage, inheritance, and property, and their
exclusion from the public sphere, such control was first inscribed in the
canonical principles inherited from Spanish law and then, after
independence, in the secularization processes carried out as an attempt to
establish secular-liberal states in the nineteenth century and part of the
twentieth century (Pecheny and de la Dehesa 2014; Jaramillo Sierra 2008).
Mario Pecheny and Rafael de la Dehesa maintain that the processes of
exclusion characteristic of the heteronormative model did not transform
with the attempts at secularization or the inclusion of the middle classes and
low-income sectors in the nineteenth century or the first half of the
twentieth century. Their perspective, albeit counterintuitive, correctly
highlights that, on the one hand, these processes were invisible to all actors
and analysts, making it a successful ideological process, and, on the other,
that this ideology was internalized, not so much because of a political-
religious effect, but rather as an effect of the secular-liberal principles that
never questioned the hierarchical heterosexual matrix, exclusionary of
nonbinary bodies and practices (Pecheny and de la Dehesa 2009).

The political processes of “normalization of sexual citizenship” (Figari

2010, 225; here and following, all translations by the authors) date back to
three historical moments in the region. The first, in the 1960s and 1970s,
was the emergence of the “homosexual movement,” which dealt with the
invisibility or persecution and criminalization of bodies by state and
nonstate actors. The second, in the 1980s, is framed within the outbreak of
HIV/AIDS, which marked—especially for gay men, transsexuals, and
transvestites, perceived as “high-risk populations”—a new circuit of
preMudice and violence, but also prompted in the countries new regional and
international articulations of activists and groups (Serrano-Amaya and
Gomes da Costa Santos 2016; Raupp Rios 2010). The third period of LGBT
activism, in the mid-1980s and 1990s, describes the development of
transnational bonds in the context of transitions to democracy, the
emergence of new political constitutions, the scaling up of armed conflicts,
and the instauration of a neoliberal model that still reigns, or has been
renewed, over most of the region.

This entry examines the geopolitical context that defines the relationship
between LGBT activism and human rights in Latin America in the
twentieth century. Although there is plenty to be said about all the countries
in the region, this text is limited to providing examples from Ecuador,
Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Brazil and Mexico are crucial in
that they are, in themselves, a universe of pioneering inspiration for the
whole continent.

The Early Organizations

LGBT activism in Latin America first appeared in the 1960s and 1970s.
Despite the differences among the countries' movements, the initial wave of
activism was marked by the context of turbulent political processes,
including the presence of the revolutionary left; new women's, indigenous,
and black social movements; dictatorships and repression by authoritarian
regimes in many countries; and not one but several events of state
persecution. Among the events and movements that inspired the collective
action and politicization of youths seeking social and sexual transformation
were the Cuban Revolution of 1959 (which inspired the Left), the student
riots of 1968 in Paris and the Tlatelolco massacre of students in Mexico
City in the same year, the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, and
the countercultural and feminist movements of the Global North
(Simonetto
2017; Figari 2010; de la Dehesa 2010). It was in this political climate that
the early homosexual groups in Latin America emerged, driven, for the
most part, by emblematic activists such as Nancy Cárdenas (1934–1994) in
Mexico, León Zuleta (1952–1993) and Manuel Velandia Mora (1955–) in
Colombia, and Néstor Perlongher (1949–1992) in Argentina.

The emerging period of the first organizations was also influenced by an

ambivalent relationship to the Left (Serrano-Amaya and Gomes da Costa
Santos 2016; Simonetto 2017). Initiatives by Latin American LGBT groups
to link their struggles with those initiated by the Left were, on the whole,
viewed with caution. For the region's leftist movements, the struggle for
sexual liberation was secondary to the class struggle and perceived as an
ultimate expression of “bourgeois decadence” (Simonetto 2017, 161). These
early groups were “marginalized by the Right and scorned by the Left”
(Pecheny and de la Dehesa 2009, 9), but it is indisputable that it was under
the wing of leftist formations that the early homosexual collectives first
came together (Simonetto 2017).

The pioneers in this process were groups with radical perspectives, which
formed in Argentina and Mexico. The Argentine group Nuestro Mundo
(Our World), founded in 1967 by Héctor Anabitarte (1940–), a trade
unionist, post office worker, and former member of the Communist Party,
was the first organized group in South America (Simonetto 2017). In 1971
Grupo Nuestro Mundo (GNM) Moined leftist, middle-class university
students (operating underground since 1967), anarchists, and religious
groups to form the Frente de Liberación Homosexual Argentino (FLHA;
Argentine Homosexual Liberation Front), a clearly Marxist group
(Comunidad Homosexual Argentina 2018; Rapisardi 2008). Carlos Figari
(2010) explains that during the 1970s the FLHA was intensely active: it
participated in protests and study groups, was allied to feminist groups, and
had contact with gay and lesbian groups in other countries. Despite its
achievements, even after the end of the dictatorship and Juan Domingo
Perón's (1895–1974) return to power in 1973, the FLHA remained a mainly
underground institution (Brown 2002). However, Perón's death triggered
increased right-wing paramilitary activities targeting homosexuals, leading
to the erosion of the FLHA's and other homosexual collectives' ranks, a
slump in the movement, and its final dissolution in 1976.

In Mexico, the emergence of the first homosexual groups was inspired by

the 1969 Stonewall riots and by the political, social, cultural, and
ideological transformations of the 1970s. In August 1971 a group of
intellectuals led by the activist Nancy Cárdenas founded the Frente de
Liberación Homosexual Mexicano (FLHM; Mexican Homosexual
Liberation Front) in Mexico City (de la Dehesa 2007). As with the FLHA,
the FLHM had a predominantly radical agenda and was distinguished as
being a “pioneer gay and lesbian organization, which served as a seedbed of
future drivers of the lesbian and gay movement.” Its roots went back to
“communist circles” and highlighted “the role of workers in the liberation
of the oppressed” (MogroveMo 2000, 63). The FLHM split in 1973 as a
result of internal pressures, primarily because of differences between its
male and female members. Other groups were subsequently formed:
Grupos de los Martes y los Viernes (Group of Tuesdays and Fridays), the
Grupo-Grupo (Group-Group), and Sex-Pol, which had “a strong reflexive
nature, raising awareness about the homosexual” (Figari 2010, 230). In
1978, against the backdrop of a political demonstration to commemorate the
tenth anniversary of the student movement of 1968 and the Cuban
Revolution, the various groups reunited as the Frente Homosexual de
Acción Revolucionaria (FHAR; Homosexual Revolutionary Action Front)
(Simonetto 2017).

Also in the 1970s, lesbians in women's groups mobilized. In 1975 Mexico

City celebrated the World Conference of the International Women's Year,
a space in which lesbian women took the floor. The Lesbos group was
founded in 1977, followed by the Oikabeth group, which included a
dissident part of the Lesbos group and former members of the FHAR
(MogroveMo 2000). At the same time, some transgender groups, such as
Mariposas RoMas (Red Butterflies) and Mariposas Negras (Black
Butterflies), appeared (Argüello Pazmiño 2013).

In the same way as in Argentina and other South American countries, the
emergence of gay and lesbian movements in Brazil was marked by
dictatorial oppression (1964–1985). In the 1960s and 1970s, the dictatorship
of General Emílio Garrastazú Médici (1905–1985) launched a campaign to
“cleanse” society of homosexuality, considering it a manifestation of
immorality (Green 2010, 78). The alliance with the Left (especially with
Partido Obrero [Workers' Party]) politicized the gay groups and collectives,
and it allowed their organized emergence by the end of the 1970s. The
organization Somos (We Are), so called as homage to the FLHA
publication of the same name, was the first gay organization in Brazil. As
mentioned by Figari (2010), because of the tension with gay men and the
need to organize themselves around their own agenda, lesbians from Somos
separated off and formed a new group called the Grupo de Acción Lésbica
Feminista (Lesbian Feminist Action Group), which fought for ten years,
until its end in 1990, for the rights of lesbians in Brazil. In parallel, in 1980,
the academic and activist Luiz Roberto Mott (1946–) propelled the first
LGBT human rights organization in Brazil, the Grupo Gay da Bahia (Gay
Group of Bahia). The group's activities turned toward the defense of human
rights and the exposure of violations against LGBT people.

In Chile, sexual minority groups emerged in the midst of a prevailing

climate of political polarization and an intensification of the social conflict
marked by the victory of Salvador Allende (1908–1973) in the 1970
presidential election (Robles 2008). The sociopolitical environment led a
group of homosexuals, transgender people, and lesbians from low-income
origins “to demonstrate for the first time in the center of Santiago. Around
fifty people protested police abuse, but they were soon beaten and dispersed
by the police forces. In the same way as the socialist proMect, this pioneering
initiative sank vis-à-vis [Augusto] Pinochet's dictatorship” (Simonetto
2017, 170). Following the 1973 coup d'état and the subsequent
establishment of the dictatorship (1973–1990), the repression of sexual
minorities intensified; the emerging homosexual community, which had
been forming under the Allende government, was restricted by curfew,
“leaving them engulfed in the underground and under military surveillance”
(Palacio Vargas 2017).

The Integración (Integration) group appeared in 1977. It was the first gay
organization that existed under Pinochet's dictatorship. This group, in
contrast with other dispersed collectives of the decade, “did not have a
revolutionary goal, rather it sought social acceptance” (Simonetto 2017,
170). The group met in private houses, where its members gave educational
talks on homosexuality. These activities created political awareness in the
movement and forged networks of new homosexual collectives and leaders,
which, in 1982, culminated in the first gay congress in Chile.

While in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile, LGBT mobilization

emerged in the 1970s, in countries such as Uruguay and Ecuador the
sociopolitical and violent context contained any attempt at collective action
during the entire decade. The origin of Uruguayan LGBT groups can be
situated around 1984, toward the end of the authoritarian military
dictatorship (1973–1985). According to the activist and academic Diego
Sempol (2015), state violence during the dictatorship and the early years of
democracy inspired the formation of these groups. The year 1984 saw the
creation of the first gay organization, Fundación Escorpio del Uruguay
(Grupo de Acción y Apoyo Homosexual) (Scorpio Foundation of Uruguay
[Homosexual Action and Support Group]). The organization emerged after
a meeting of twenty friends who organized as a social movement both to
help homosexuals and to “understand themselves” (Sempol 2016, 20). Two
years later, in 1986, came the formation of Homosexuales Unidos (United
Homosexuals), an LGBT organization of great prominence on the
Uruguayan scene that mobilized against state violence. Homosexuales
Unidos gave great visibility to the problems that homosexuals had to live
with and progressively adopted alternative agendas such as that of the
transgender groups.

Finally, in Colombia, the first homosexual groups appeared at the beginning

of the 1970s at the same time as the Argentine and Mexican ones. In 1970
the writer León Zuleta and the activist Manuel Velandia Mora created the
Movimiento de Liberación Homosexual Colombiano (MLHC; Colombian
Homosexual Liberation Movement) in order to transform the oppressive
social institutions and the arguments on which they were based (Sánchez
Barrera 2017; Serrano-Amaya 2012). Zuleta was a prominent figure on the
Colombian LGBT scene of the 1970s and 1980s. His transgressive and
unconventional personality turned him into a recognized figure that was
very visible within the movement. In 1977 he led a series of meetings with
homosexual groups aimed at promoting dialogue between the collectives,
the conformation of solidarity networks, and the consolidation of national
agendas. The meetings gave rise to the Grupo de Encuentro por la
Liberación de los Güeis (Meeting Group for the Liberation of Gays)
(Velandia Mora 2016). December of the same year witnessed the emergence
of the Marxist newspaper El Otro (The Other) as a flagship publication of
the MLHC (Serrano-Amaya 2012). Its slogan was “of sexualities and
counterculture,” and it was considered the first medium to advocate for the
recognition of gay rights in the country's public arena (Simonetto 2017,
171). From its beginnings, LGBT mobilization in Colombia was especially
the target of violence by both state and nonstate actors. The confluence of
the moral reMection of homosexuals and the presence of legal and illegal
armed groups that defended traditional gender roles created a dangerous
environment for LGBT people (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica
2015). In such a context, the creation of gay movements and the struggle for
their recognition was, above all, an act of courage.

The Impact of HIV/AIDS on LGBT

Mobilization
The second wave of mobilization for LGBT rights in Latin America was
marked by the appearance of HIV/AIDS at the end of the 1970s, reaching
its peak in the 1980s (Pecheny 2003). In the midst of the crisis, the LGBT
movement took a turn and emerged with renewed vigor through a new type
of collective organization. Awareness groups, social denunciation meetings,
and magazines were replaced by advocacy efforts and a search for the
recognition of human rights—in particular, the right to health. As José
Fernando Serrano-Amaya mentions, “The struggle for a wide cultural
transformation gave way to more specific, identity-based demands. Instead
of relying on demands related to sexual liberation and cultural
transformation, new activisms that emerged in Latin America were mainly
focused on providing care to those affected by AIDS” (Serrano-Amaya and
Gomes da Costa Santos 2016, 2).

Gay men and, to a lesser extent, transvestites became visible after the first
public cases of HIV/AIDS in Latin America (Pecheny 2003). This visibility,
however, had paradoxical consequences. The appearance of HIV/AIDS
exposed gays as the cause of a public health problem, increasing
discrimination and veering public opinion toward stigmatization. Yet,
HIV/AIDS also brought political opportunities for the recognition of gay
rights and the strengthening of social mobilization. The HIV/AIDS crisis
impelled the movements of the 1980s to establish a dialogue with other
actors, such as state and international institutions, to advocate both for the
recognition of the right to sexuality as a human right and for access to
international cooperation and funding (Serrano-Amaya and Gomes da Costa
Santos 2016).

In such countries as Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador, the emergence of

HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s intensified
discrimination against homosexuals, as they were considered the only
vector of the disease. According to a 1996 report by the Comité
Intereclesial de Derechos Humanos en América Latina (Inter-church
Committee on Human Rights in Latin America), many of the sexual
minorities or people who worked with HIV/AIDS prevention organizations
in Colombia were the obMect of multiple attacks and death threats. The
social climate in Brazil was no different. Shortly after the first publicized
HIV/AIDS-related death in Brazil in 1983, the term risk group was
popularized in public discourse in reference to the epidemic (Klein 1998).
The response to this discrimination by the media and the state was the
emergence of organizations dedicated to vindicating the image of
homosexuals. The activism of the 1980s in Brazil can be attributed mainly
to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in charge of developing
campaigns and actions aimed at reporting the implications of HIV/AIDS
and the need to guarantee access to health for homosexuals. The role of
NGOs, in particular of the Grupo Gay da Bahia, was so relevant that by
1994 there were already over 500 organizations in Brazil (Klein 1998).

In Ecuador during this period, HIV/AIDS was proclaimed as a new

“plague” and identified as the consequence of practices attributed to
homosexuals. In this context, several organizations saw the possibility to
claim legal changes and protect the health of homosexuals. The Sociedad
Gay (SOGA; Gay Society) group, as well as other gay collectives, emerged
in the midst of national turmoil surrounding HIV/AIDS. This situation also
led to the creation of the Fundación Ecuatoriana de Ayuda, Educación y
Prevención del SIDA (Ecuadorian Foundation for Aid, Education, and
AIDS Prevention), which promoted the development of civic action to
encourage the viability of human rights, diversity, gender equality, and
social Mustice, as well as the elimination of all forms of discrimination, and
the creation of the first Red Nacional LGBT (National LGBT Network) and
the Red de Organizaciones con TrabaMo en SIDA (Network of Organizations
Working with AIDS) (Mancero Villarreal 2007).

With the arrival of HIV, the activist groups, which in the 1970s had been
characterized by their radical discourse, transformed their relationship with
the state. In Mexico, for example, “if the epidemic reinforced stigmatization
and prompted incidents of state repression, the purportedly politically
neutral frame of public health also opened limited opportunities for gay
activists to articulate linkages with the state” (de la Dehesa 2010, 154). The
gay collectives began to include new types of activities in their agendas;
informing about the disease and its possible treatments, conferences,
advocacy before public authorities, and the use of legal resources were the
new repertoires that progressively monopolized the organizations' actions.
Although HIV/AIDS opened up new spaces and opportunities for
discussion for gay groups, this privilege was exclusively for gay men. The
agendas of lesbian women and transgender people did not enMoy the same
visibility in the public debate, leading them to activate new processes of
politicization alongside feminist organizations (Argüello Pazmiño 2013).

Argentine groups also modified their means of appealing for recognition. In

contrast with the FLHA of the 1970s, the gay movements of the new
decades did not expose homosexuality as a form of transgression, “but
rather as a lifestyle choice as legitimate as any other” (Pecheny 2003, 257).
According to Mario Pecheny, “the language of liberation is replaced by that
of rights. The corresponding community and contemporary gay-lesbian
movements also attempted to redefine homosexual identity in terms of gay
identity” (2003, 257). The Comunidad Homosexual Argentina
(Homosexual Community of Argentina, the first postdictatorship
organization of sexual minorities, was also founded in the mid-1980s.
During the 1980s, most of the activists in this organization focused on
securing a space of visibility for gay communities, and in 1988 the group
promoted awareness campaigns on HIV/AIDS together with the Pan
American Health Organization. Subsequently, in the early 1990s, a number
of NGOs, such as Fundación Huésped (Guest Foundation) and Fundar
(Found), Moined health professionals in the fight against HIV/AIDS, which
was the result of the totalizing effect of HIV/AIDS on the collective action
of gay groups. Similar to the situation in Mexico, some activists decided to
separate from the struggle against HIV/AIDS to establish their own
agendas. This led to the formation of a new wave of groups, such as Gays y
Lesbianas por los Derechos Civiles (Gays and Lesbians for Civil Rights).

Democratization and Transnational Groups

This section focuses on the democratization processes, responsible for the
political renewal of activism in Latin America. The end of the dictatorships
and the appearance of accentuated social and pluralist constitutions marked
the beginning of a new moment in the genealogy of LGBT mobilization.
The fight against HIV/AIDS had placed human rights at the forefront of the
struggle, but the 1990s brought new circumstances that activated the use of
the rights and the search for legal reform as the dominant repertoire. The
revaluation of the rule of law and the new charters of rights coincided with
increased violence against LGBT people. This paradox was inherent to the
region's experience of the 1990s: the emergence of a progressive discourse
of human rights and the recognition of marginalized minorities coexisted
alongside growing cultural and systemic violence against these groups
(Lemaitre Ripoll 2009).

LGBT activists in the 1990s used international platforms to seek

recognition of sexual rights. The first explicit reference to sexuality, sexual
orientation, and sexual rights in the international human rights discourse
appeared after the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna
(Serrano-Amaya 2012). Two years later, the participation of lesbian groups
was important in questioning the topic of sexual diversity in international
bodies. At the Fourth World Conference on Women in BeiMing, in 1995,
lesbian groups, aligned with women's and feminist groups, insisted on the
explicit recognition of discrimination on account of sexual orientation.
However, the legitimization of sexual rights for women accorded in BeiMing
“was not accompanied by equivalent advances in terms of the rights of
sexual diversity (homosexual, lesbians, bisexual, transsexuals, transgender,
sex workers)” (Corrêa 2008, 28). Given the systematic opposition of
conservative sectors, it was not possible to include a specific mention of
sexual orientation in Paragraph 227 of the BeiMing Platform for Action, a
paragraph referring to the multiple forms of discrimination against women.
In any event, the participation of lesbian women in the conference “served
to raise awareness regarding the exclusion of lesbians from existing human
rights guarantees and laid the groundwork for future action at the local,
national, and international level” (Rosenbloom 1995, xi).

In the 1990s human rights discourses, even if uncritically applied (Corrêa

2008), drove activists to focus on international bodies, forging international
networks of LGBT organizations. The International Lesbian and Gay
Association (ILGA) and the human rights organizations Amnesty
International and International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights
Commission (IGLHRC) were key in accompanying the national groups in
the documentation and diffusion of human rights violations against LGBT
people and the local struggles on which these groups embarked.

The ILGA was founded in 1978 as the first effort to promote international
gatherings between LGBT activists, and it included over 1,000
organizations in 117 countries as of 2018 (by which time it was officially
known as the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex
Association). During early ILGA meetings, the question about the
participation of “Third World” countries emerged as a central topic of
debate (de la Dehesa, 2017). Many of the discussions focused on the
concern that the ILGA may be a “First World organism whose main
interests were not precisely related to the Third World but rather in the
interlocution with supranational bodies” (MogroveMo 2000, 273). In time
and through the pressure exerted by Latin American groups, the ILGA
became stronger in the region. The organization's thirteenth annual
conference was scheduled to take place in GuadalaMara, Mexico, in 1991;
three years earlier, “the Grupo Orgullo Homosexual de Liberación
[Homosexual Pride Liberation Group] of GuadalaMara requested to be the
venue for the conference, and the request was accepted provided that
lesbian women were involved” (MogroveMo 2000, 275). For the first time in
history, a transnational LGBT event would take place in Latin America;
however, local authorities, in a Moint effort with the Catholic Church,
launched a campaign to stop the event. The mayor of GuadalaMara, Gabriel
Covarrubias Ibarra, declared in an interview with Metrópoli newspaper that
“an event of this nature cannot be authorized under any circumstances;
neither our customs, nor our history, education, religion, or anything else
permits it” (quoted in Comité Intereclesial de Derechos Humanos en
América Latina 1996, 20). Given the mayor's declaration and fear of
possible police action, the conference was moved to Acapulco. Despite this
reMection by the authorities and religious and far-right groups, the scandal
made the topic more visible and led to the intervention of the National
Human Rights Commission and of groups of intellectuals and artists who
openly pronounced themselves in favor of the event (MogroveMo 2000). In
June 1995 the ILGA held its seventeenth conference in Rio de Janeiro with
300 participants from almost sixty countries, including delegates from eight
Latin American countries (Comité Intereclesial de Derechos Humanos en
América Latina 1996).

The IGLHRC (today OutRight Action International) worked in San

Francisco with volunteers and no resources except for the few things
volunteers could provide. But those volunteers had good contacts and
connections with individuals and groups in the region (per the authors'
personal communication with founder Julie Dorf in 2018). Between 1995
and 2001, the IGLHRC co-sponsored reports in Colombia and Brazil and
published a global report on the situation of lesbians, as well as a 2001
report, The Rights of Transvestites in Argentina, led by Lohana Berkins
(Berkins, Sarda, and Long 2001). In 1997 Amnesty International also
published Breaking the Silence, a global report on human rights violations
based on sexual orientation.

By 1994 there were five gay and lesbian organizations in Colombia that
together created the Asociación Colombiana de Lesbianas y Homosexuales
(Colombian Association of Lesbians and Homosexuals) (Ordoñez 1995). In
1995 the activist Juan Pablo Ordoñez published No Human Being Is
Disposable, a Moint report of the Colombian Human Rights Committee, the
IGLHRC, and Proyecto Dignidad por los Derechos Humanos en Colombia
(Dignity ProMect for Human Rights in Colombia). The report documented
“social cleansing” based on sexual orientation and emphasized the
preMudice, violence, and material difficulties suffered by low-income LGBT
people. Increased violence occurred in parallel with the issuance of the
1991 constitution, which marked a new era of legal progressivism in
Colombia's political history. The secularization of the state, the
transformation of a formal liberal state to a social state, and the creation of
the Constitutional Court as the primary institution of control for
fundamental rights are some of the transformations introduced by this new
political charter. In fact, LGBT actors—both individuals and groups—
successfully resorted to this court and obtained protection for their right to
privacy, to equality in access to health and education, and to rectifying sex
within official documents without any medical or psychological
requirement.

The case of Marta Álvarez provides an example of how organizations saw

the regional human rights platforms as an opportunity to remedy what the
law could not achieve at the national level. Álvarez was denied the right to
conMugal visits in prison given her sexual orientation as a lesbian. She
brought the matter to the Comisión Interamericana de los Derechos
Humanos (CIDH; Inter-American Commission for Human Rights) with the
support of national and international LGBT and women's groups, and in
1999 her case became the first sexual orientation–related case admitted by
this body. In 2014 the CIDH sided with Álvarez; the outcome of the case
was a state apology to Álvarez and a commitment to concrete action to
prevent future discrimination. Whether these advances in rights are a
guarantee of substantial sociocultural transformations is a controversial
issue, but, in particular, the Álvarez case “not only [led] to a legal change,
but also [served as] a contribution to the development of the political
agendas of the feminist movements and homosexual and transgender groups
and organizations in Colombia” (Serrano-Amaya 2006, 346–347).

Through the 1995 IGLHRC special publication Unspoken Rules, a

collection of reports covering the situation of lesbians in the world,
including some Latin American countries, activists revealed how “women
face violence, harassment, and discrimination because they reMect socially
imposed gender roles and because they have intimate relationships with
other women” (Rosenbloom 1995, ix). In Argentina, for example, the
process of democratization generated the conditions for groups of lesbians
and gay men to emerge in the 1990s, but this was not enough to end
preMudice, the state's authoritarianism, and Catholic discourse against LGBT
populations. Although same-sex sexual relations were not considered a
crime, law enforcement agents could arrest homosexuals through “police
decrees” that were regulations through which they determined what
constituted a contravention of the social order.

In Uruguay, LGBT people, and especially lesbians, were vulnerable to

various forms of harassment and discrimination, even though the
Uruguayan Constitution included norms that, in theory, protected them from
persecution and reMection. During the 1990s such lesbian organizations as
Lesvenus and Las Mismas (The Same [Women]), as well as mixed
organizations such as Homosexuales Unidos, faced abuses that continued
even after the transition to democracy (Martínez 1995). Unspoken Rules
also revealed that in countries such as Mexico, where dictatorships were not
the rule during the twentieth century, the situation of lesbians and gay men
was not radically different: they were subMected to violence from religious
groups, which reinforced a normative vision of heterosexuality (Careaga
Pérez and Jiménez 1995).

In 1996 the well-known Brazilian activist Luiz Roberto Mott (the founder
of Grupo Gay da Bahia) published a report, cosponsored by the IGLHRC,
called Epidemic of Hate, which cataloged human rights violations suffered
by gays, lesbians, and transgender people in the country. The report
included an important component on the historical origin of homophobia, as
well as the effects of an antigay ideology predominant in Brazil in the
1980s and 1990s. The introduction to the report begins with a sentence that
explains the situation in Brazil and, to some extent, in the region during the
1990s: “Behind its international reputation for welcoming sexual diversity,
Brazil hides a shocking secret: a homosexual is brutally murdered every
four days, a victim of the homophobia that pervades Brazilian society. The
land of Carnaval is full of contradictions” (Mott 1996, 1).

Another important example of how the human rights discourse prevailed in

the region was the mobilization around the decriminalization of
homosexuality in Ecuador. Triángulo Andino (Andean Triangle) was the
country's first group of collectives whose aim was to gather signatures to
appeal to the Tribunal of Constitutional Guarantees to abolish Article 516
of the criminal code. Under heavy national and international pressure, on 25
November 1997 the Tribunal of Constitutional Guarantees decided
unanimously to decriminalize homosexuality in Ecuador, opening a
pathway to the visibility of LGBT people in the country. This was
confirmed the following year by the celebration of the first gay pride march
and legal reform that led to the enactment of the first political constitution
in Latin America to explicitly prohibit discrimination on account of sexual
orientation (Xie and Corrales 2010).
Conclusion
Legal achievements have undoubtedly brought benefits to LGBT people in
the region. The repeal of oppressive laws, the recognition of local rights,
and international commitments ratified by the states have provided social
movements with the legitimacy to speak based on the authority of the law.
However, legal mobilization has not eliminated the limitations of human
rights discourse—its claims of ideological neutrality, invisibility, and
universalism. For example, to argue that human rights are claims made
before the state and its agents may subMect LGBT groups and individuals to
greater vulnerability vis-à-vis the violations against them committed by
nonstate actors, including their families (Thoreson 2017).

The issue of universality has been an obMect of constant debate; the human
rights debate reflects specific epistemological and cultural visions, one
example of which, as pointed out by Roger Raupp Rios (2010), is that
LGBT rights in Europe and North America are created and developed based
on claims for the right to privacy and nondiscrimination—or negative rights
—whereas in Latin America, it is social rights—or positive rights—that
mark LGBT demands. As mentioned by Sonia Corrêa, “the actors of sexual
politics” assumed different versions of the universalism of human rights
without much consideration of their implications (2008, 34).

Despite accepting these criticisms, social movements, including LGBT

movements, among others, have managed to operate around such debates.
The distinction drawn by Stephen Hopgood (see Thoreson 2017) between
human rights in lowercase and Human Rights in capitals is useful to
illustrate what has happened in the region's activism, and it is the use of the
notion of “human rights” as a signifier that invokes numerous and even
contradictory claims for social and sexual Mustice. Human Rights, in
contrast, is a very formal ideological circuit among New York, Geneva, and
London, focusing on international law, criminal Mustice, and institutions of
global governance—a space for elites that does not correspond to what most
in-field human rights activism uses in a flexible, diverse, and adaptable
fashion to formulate the need for change (Thoreson 2017). This, despite the
substantial theoretical differences in the foundational arguments, can be
related to what Corrêa points to when she talks about the tensions derived
from the contemporary epistemology of sexualities: the postmodern
perspective on sexuality rights and the law as possible remedies for
inMustice. That is, it highlights “the fluidity, the instability of sexual
practices and identities— and [contrasts them with] the Enlightened and
Kantian principles that continue to predominantly constrain the
contemporary paradigm of human rights” (2008, 32–33).

It can be said that at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the
twenty-first century, LGBT activism in Latin America has worked on the
articulation of a programmatic or deconstructive rights discourse on Mustice,
whereby it sheds light on the tensions that coexist in the field without being
canceled out. The most important effects of addressing the rights debate
have been, as maintained by Julieta Lemaitre Ripoll, of symbolic weight.
The decisions and laws that recognize the equality (as normality) of LGBT
people have an effect on the self-perception of gays, lesbians, and
transgender people that consists of the “the possibility of articulating an
identity and understanding of community life within a meaningful social
network” (2009, 272).

SEE ALSO Activism in Africa South of the Sahara; African Commission on

Human and Peoples' Rights; Frente de Liberación Homosexual; Grupo Gay
da Bahia; HIV/AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean; Human Rights;
Human Rights and Queer Arab Refugees; Human Rights in Asia; Human
Rights in Europe; Marriage, Same-Sex, in Latin America; Neoliberalism in
Latin America; Transfeminism; Travesti and Trans Activism in Latin
America and the Caribbean

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Human Rights and Queer Arab Refugees
NICOLE FARES
Independent scholar
Alpharetta, GA

The challenges queer Arab refugees face post–Arab Spring.

At no other time have gay rights been regarded as more successful on the
global front, and more deeply contested. Since the beginning of the Arab
Spring in late 2010, revolutions have brought down corrupt governments
and dictators in the Middle East, transforming the region into a hotbed of
political and social change. These transitions carry along with them
conflicting issues, including the factor of LGBT refugees. Amid the
revolutions and the human events taking place, many Arab LGBT
individuals have grown more unsure of their future as a community. Queer
refugees continue to rely on social media and blogs to reach the Middle
Eastern and international LGBT communities; to come to terms with their
identities as queer, Arab, and refugees; and to discuss and understand their
experiences outside their native countries.
 © AP PHOTO
Lesbian Refugee from Iran Seeks Asylum in Turkey. Roodabeh Parvaresh (right)
fled from Iran after she was threatened with being reported to the authorities as a
lesbian. Turkey's close proximity to the Middle East, coupled with its relatively more
liberal society, draws some Middle East queer refugees to seek asylum there, although
discrimination, the high cost of living, and the lack of support means that many LGBTQ
refugees still struggle to survive.

As of 2017, over 1 million Syrian refugees resided in Lebanon and more

than 3 million resided in Turkey (UNHCR 2017) as a result of the Syrian
uprising and subsequent civil war (2011–). Many Syrian LGBT refugees
view their current situation as temporary as they seek asylum in Western
countries. Queer Syrian individuals struggle to survive in Lebanon and
Turkey owing to various factors, including discrimination, the high cost of
living, and lack of support. The maMority of Syrian refugees in the Middle
East register with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) to access support, and most of them do not disclose their sexual
orientation for fear of experiencing discrimination and violence from their
families and conservative Middle East societies (Du Verdie 2014).
Although Lebanon's LGBT community is growing in prominence owing to
organizations such as Meem, Helem, and MOSAIC (MENA Organization
for Services, Advocacy, Integration and Capacity Building), homosexuality
remains taboo in mainstream society. In such an economically troubled,
conservative country, many gay Syrian men struggle to provide food and
shelter for themselves and their families and are forced into prostitution as a
means of survival (Du Verdie 2014). As a result of the financial hardships
and difficulties refugees can encounter accessing services, LGBT Syrians
are increasingly reliant on the help of others. Turning to Syrian
communities in Lebanon and Turkey proves problematic for them, as
members of these communities endorse values from their country of origin
that are homophobic or conservative. Reduced to dependence on others for
survival, many LGBT Syrians are at risk of being abused, and if in need of
protection, limited support is provided to them by foreign states. In the case
of gay refugee Muhammad Wisam Sankari, for instance, he reported many
threats by violent male groups before he was found decapitated in Istanbul
in 2016. No protection was provided to Sankari despite his many attempts
to seek help from the Turkish state, and little was done following his death,
as no arrests were made by the Turkish police (Moore 2016). LGBT Syrians
are therefore growing more unsure of their safety in the Middle East, and
the maMority of them are seeking asylum in Western countries, hoping to
gain access to more secure and LGBT-friendly spaces.

As attention and criticism have been directed toward the discriminations

LGBT individuals are facing in the Middle East, little has been written
about the trials of Syrian LGBT refugees in Western countries. For, after
facing persecution and violence in their home countries, and enduring
transitions to neighboring states, the refugees given access into Western
countries face political, socioeconomic, and psychoemotional stresses. To
be granted refugee status on the grounds of sexuality is to enter a highly
charged discursive arena that has existed since the adoption of the United
Nation's 1951 Refugee Convention (McGhee 2003). The main controversy
surrounding this topic centers on the granting of asylum to individuals for
persecution stemming from their belonging to a certain social group,
making this provision the most contested in refugee law.

Human Rights and the International Queer

Identity
The early twenty-first century has seen the rise of a global gay rights
movement and a push for international LGBT rights in many parts of the
world. International human rights organizations are calling for the
application of international human rights principles to LGBT individuals
globally. This movement of globalization has located itself in the realm of
gay rights, where the internationalization of human rights has become a
prime indicator used to evaluate the “progress” of nations (Stychin 2004).
The movement has also led to the globalization of same-sex sexualities as
identities. This international model of sexual identity, which is inherently
Western in essence and ideology, is problematic. As the legal scholar Sonia
Katyal notes, “Some cultures view homosexuality as an activity, not an
identity” (2002, 99–100). And while there has been an emergence of openly
self-identifying gay and lesbian individuals who define their public sexual
identity along the lines of their sexual orientations since the late twentieth
century, many Western activists and scholars fail to recognize that
arguments for legal protection on the basis of sexual orientation often
collide with, rather than incorporate, these preexisting social meanings of
same-sex sexual activity. In other words, the assumed equivalence between
sexual behavior, sexual orientation, and sexual identity, which is dominant
in Western law, fails when applied in a cross-cultural framework (Katyal
2002). The idea of a universal paradigm for sexual identity, which then
becomes promoted as a universal global human rights fixture, renders all
sexual acts, regardless of their motivations, as having similar significance in
global civil rights terms. However, imposing a gay, lesbian, or bisexual
identity on individuals who may engage in same-sex sexual behavior but
“who do not fit a substitutive paradigm between identity and conduct …
can be unduly confining [and] exclusionary” (Katyal 2002, 115). And apart
from sexual acts having no inherent meaning per se, they “carry different
meanings in different cultural and temporal contexts, [and] it is [thus]
largely impossible to universalize clear definitions of identity, and the
relationship between act and identity is not nearly as ‘fixed’ as the model of
gay personhood presupposes” (115). Therefore, focusing on sexual
identity–based protections, which are not always palpable to some cultures,
can be very limiting and, in many cases, alienates many who do not
subscribe to sexual identities but deserve these protections, creating a
system of “gay-identity politics [sweeping] the world, like so much of
Western commercial culture, but [that] may also prove as repressive and
imperial as the old bigotries already in place” (Browning 1998, 28). In the
case of Syrian LGBTs, for instance, many choose not to apply for refugee
status based on their sexual orientation, as they do not consider themselves
to belong under the Western-specific sexual identity of gay, lesbian,
bisexual, queer, or other.

Focusing on identity-based protections has thus proven to be an

unsuccessful method of attaining equality for sexual minorities. This
method of protection is limited when applied in a cross-cultural context,
which reveals the inherent contradictions of the global gay rights discourse.
In order for the global gay rights movement to succeed and the protection of
sexual minorities to be effective internationally, they must, therefore, take
into account sexualities and sexual behaviors outside the traditional
categories of sexual orientation and recognize that “many individuals who
fall outside of neatly circumscribed categories of sexual identity are Must as
deserving of a model of liberation that includes them” (Katyal 2002, 100).

As human rights have become an indicator of the progress of nations, gay

rights have become a mark of modernity, and the acceptance of gay rights
as a mark of embracing modernity, but this acceptance is framed
discursively through casting other countries and religions—and, more
specifically, Muslim and Arab immigrants to the West—as traditional and
backward (Puar 2007; Butler 2008). Western countries are using their status
as sanctuaries for LGBT Arabs as a form of sexual exceptionalism, and the
liberal gay politics of visibility employed by the West when discussing
Middle Eastern LGBT communities, and more recently Arab queer
refugees, is ultimately about the “‘[development of] a righteous critique of
power from the perspective of the inMured’ (queer) victim, who demands the
protection of the benevolent state from the ‘social inMury’ of homophobia”
(Brown 1995, 27). The only acceptable visible queer Arab is the victim,
which is why Judith Butler (2008), among other academics and queer
activists who interrogate the “‘Western male white-dominated
organizations’ that advocate on behalf of ‘victimized’ queer Arabs” (Ritchie
2010, 558), insists on the inseparability of the queer struggle and the
struggle against racism and occupation in order to disrupt the effects of the
globalized queer ideology that has labeled the Arab LGBTs as victims and
has rendered queer Arabs as “acceptable, and visible, only insofar as they
mute or repudiate their [Arabness]” (Ritchie 2010, 562–563). Employed in
the discourse of Syrian LGBT refugees, and queer Arab refugees in general,
liberal gay politics of visibility thus renders the Arab, “even on the
metaphorical level of sexuality, the victim of the Western phallus”
(Lagrange 2000, 189).

The West—specifically the United States, Canada, and Germany—has

become a primary destination for individuals applying for refugee status on
the basis of their sexual orientation. LGBT Arab refugees, however, and
those who work with them, are involved in a system founded on highly
malleable, historically and socio-politically specific sexual terms and
identities that benefit distinct gendered, classed, and raced interests and,
thus, place LGBT Arab refugees, or any refugees from non–North
American societies for that matter, in a particularly vulnerable position.
 © CLAUDE PARIS/AP PHOTO
A Middle Eastern Gay Refugee Seeks Refuge in France. A gay refugee named
Ismael fills out paperwork in the Marseille office of Le Refuge, a French nonprofit
group that provides temporary shelter and support to young adults who have been
victimized by homophobia and transphobia. Queer refugees from the Middle East often
encounter preMudice from the mainstream Western LGBTQ population because of their
nationality.

Sexual Citizenship and Queer Arab Refugees

Today
Many queer Arab refugees fleeing persecution in their home countries
experience discrimination and trauma in the West as their national identities
continue to be regarded as obstacles preventing them from fully integrating
into the Western liberal queer community. Queer Arab refugees, and queer
Muslims, are gradually coming to the realization that the intersectionality of
their sexual orientations with their Arab identities is problematic for them in
the West as they encounter preMudice and lack of acceptance from the
mainstream Western LGBT population (Gray, Mendelsohn, and Omoto
2015). In addition to navigating these various social spheres, refugees must
grapple with potential conflicting pressures to acculturate and assimilate to
a specific Western culture (e.g., the American culture), while still
maintaining their cultural or ethnic heritage (Gray, Mendelsohn, and Omoto
2015). LGBT Arab refugees are also encountering difficulties interacting
with different social groups and communities, for they are often not
welcomed or accepted in many ethnic communities. They may be
discouraged, then, from accessing the support that might typically be
provided to refugees in Arab communities, such as that of family members,
or in the LGBT communities, such as that of organizations and nonprofit
services, whether on account of the hostility and violence they might have
encountered or as a result of the perception of being unwelcome.

LGBT Arab refugees also face daunting challenges negotiating a system

that questions the authenticity of their sexual identity. These questions of
legitimacy are constructed by ongoing evaluations of bodily appearances,
conduct, and narratives to determine their suitability in Western
homonationalist sexual categories (Puar 2007). These modes of evaluation
and investigation of the queer refugee's body across spaces and times create
significant challenges for the refugees placed within the determination
process (Murray 2014). Queer Arab refugee claimants, then, become
classified by the legislators and Western governments as either unworthy
claimants or as poor victims begging to be saved from the tyranny of their
own cultures, communities, and nations. Sexual-orientation persecution,
like gender persecution, as deployed in refugee discourse, can function as a
deeply racialized, culturally essentialist concept in that it requires Arab
LGBT people to separate their experiences of sexual violence from their
experiences as colonized people (Murray 2014). Their application for
asylum often entails generating a racialist and colonialist discourse that
critiques their native state, “while [they participate] in an adMudication
process that often depends on constructs of ‘immutable’ identity refracted
through colonialist, reified models of culture shorn of all material relations”
(Luibhéid 2008, 179). In addition, as mainstream LGBT groups and human
rights organizations seek to support queer refugees, they may inadvertently
use the refugees' statements and claims in ways that sustain homonationalist
discourses that preserve “a narrow concept of diversity defined in terms of
freedom and choice … that not incidentally chime with a neoliberal free
market ideology whose inherent exclusions are harder to name”
(Haritaworn 2012, 3). Nevertheless, as refugees encounter homophobia and
racism in their daily lives in Western countries, the homonationalist
discourse will expose the selective dynamics of asylum procedures and
interpretations, as well as the role they play in supporting the privileges of
neoliberal states (Goldberg 2009). But what is more important is the
exclusion of the histories of imperialism, colonialism, and racism from
queer refugees' narratives of sexual identity formation and migration and
that “we are not able to see how these systems of domination produce and
maintain violence against racialized sexual minorities both within and
beyond national borders” (Murray 2014, 29).

The Future of Queer Arabs Internationally

The postcolonial is inhabiting global queer space and time. In the countries
that were once colonized and oppressed by the same people who are now
working to liberate them from the restraints of their cultures and traditions,
people are discerning within the global queer discourse the same Orientalist
representations of Arab sexuality and myopic chauvinism about the
superiority of Western configurations of sexuality. The globalization of
Western notions of gay and lesbian identities has thus been met with
resistance in postcolonial nations. Western queer ideology is seen as a
means of “successfully subordinating Arabs to foreign Western ‘sexual
categories and identities’” (Ritchie 2010, 567). The international pressure to
follow such human rights principles does not seem to work, particularly
when many in the Arab world see such principles as a Western imposition.
The human rights discourse has also proven to be epistemically inMurious to
Arabs and has been used politically in Israeli and Western democracies to
serve ethnonationalist agendas. However, the very emphasis on the lands
that were once colonized imposes the binary of us/others, with history
continuing to define the past and future and the bodies that once inhabited
that space. The continuity of a normative timeline thus becomes interrupted
by the increasing weight of the past and the “diminishing future, [which]
creates a new emphasis on … the present” (Halberstam 2005, 2).

The competing demands of queer representations are gradually leading to

the shaping of hybrid queer identities. But queer Arabs remain in limbo as
they are “shamed locally (when socio-moral codes are publicly violated)
and globally (for being too gay or not gay enough). [They] are proverbially
damned if they do and damned if they don't” (Georgis 2013, 242). There is
an urgent need for queer Arab refugees to take part in the altering of the
Western pride discourse to accommodate them and the emergence of queer
Muslim identities in Western societies amid vitriolic political debates on the
presence of Islam in the Western world. Thus, queer Arabs and queer
Muslims struggle for due recognition from mainstream Western societies
and the overwhelmingly secular queer communities. This reveals the limits
of liberal multiculturalism, where, in the case of queer Syrians, religion,
sexuality, and culture conflict in multicultural capitalist societies. In order
for LGBT Syrian refugees, especially Muslim Syrians, to be fully integrated
into Western societies, it is necessary for queer Arabs and queer Muslims to
be integrated into the normative lives of Muslim and queer communities.
Providing the necessary interaction, no matter how miniscule, between
Muslims and other subcultures and communities, will lead to the
“redefining” of those communities (Hunt 2015). However, queer Arab
refugees, Muslim or otherwise, will continue to face challenges in the West
as long as the Arab culture and Islam are not integrated into the societies of
mainstream Western countries.
LGBT communities residing in the Middle East, who continue to mistrust
Western ideologies as mere agendas, regard lesbian and gay Arab refugees
as fallen victims to Westernization and foreign influence. The gay identity
becomes even more synonymous with Westernization, and gay rights
becomes a symbol of recolonization. Gay refugees are viewed as serving
Western liberal ideals and as being supporters of Western capitalist values,
as they are shown on international media outlets marching in gay pride
parades and getting married to partners of the same sex, thereby living the
Western dream of being “out” and “proud.” International actors within this
discourse promote the model of the globalized queer identity while failing
to address whether sexual orientation is considered internationally to be a
central aspect of personhood. This is a particularly important question
through which people from varying cultures view the intersections between
sexual desire, behavior, and identity differently. From the Western queer
discourse that considers international LGBT rights to be part of
international human rights came the assumption that increased visibility is a
successful formula for combating homophobia, heterosexism, and
misconceptions about LGBT people, but such visibility can prove
dangerous. Current queer politics present “coming out” as a requirement for
queer belonging and frame the discussion of LGBT human rights in the
international context that deems a visible coming-out expression of sexual
identity essential for the progress of international LGBT rights. That
method has proven to be unsuccessful in many postcolonial cultures,
because, as a replacement for the relationship between identity, conduct,
and expression, queer pride becomes a political instrument in building a
community rather than a personal choice. This model of gay civil rights is
problematic not only because it relies on an overly constrictive form of
identity but also because it alienates the very people such rights are
supposed to protect. Many activists and scholars internationally are working
to expose the logic of Western queer ideologies as mechanisms that have
enabled the reproduction and perpetuation of oppressive and racist
ideologies, as well as oppressive patriarchal and heteronormative practices.
But for the time being, queer immigrants seem bound to a constant struggle
for identity in the face of the various postcolonial borderlands (Anzaldúa
2012). The Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez said it best in his
acceptance speech for the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature:

It is only natural that they insist on measuring us with the

yardstick that they use for themselves, forgetting that the
ravages of life are not the same for all, and that the quest of
our own identity is Must as arduous and bloody for us as it was
for them. The interpretation of our reality through patterns
not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever
less free, ever more solitary.

SEE ALSO African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights; Coming-

Out/Coming-In Discourses in the Middle East; The Gay International and
Mideast LGBTQI Organizations; Human Rights; Human Rights and
Activism in Latin America; Human Rights Campaign; Human Rights in
Asia; Human Rights in Europe

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