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Navigating the Intersections of Colonial Legacies and LGBT Lives
Abstract
Farmer explores how UK-based NGOs acknowledge and engage with the impact that coloniality and the legacies of British colonialism have had on contemporary international relations and global LGBT rights. The chapter explores UK-based NGO engagements with the legacies of colonial ‘sodomy laws’, the Commonwealth and the establishment of The Commonwealth Equality Network and the experiences of LGBT people seeking asylum in the UK. Farmer interrogates the degree to which UK-based actors challenge contemporary coloniality in these areas and whether their strategies could benefit from broader recognition of the impact of coloniality on LGBT people’s lives globally.
This scoping review explores the patterns of heteronormativity in healthcare sectors across Africa and its impact on the health and well-being of LGBTIQ+ individuals. By analyzing publications from major academic databases, this study identifies key themes and research gaps in the discourse on LGBTIQ+ health and heteronormativity in Africa. The findings underscore the urgent need to address these heteronormative barriers in alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 3 (good health and well-being) and SDG 10 (reduced inequalities). Addressing heteronormativity in healthcare is essential for promoting equitable, inclusive healthcare systems and improving health outcomes for LGBTIQ+ populations across the continent.
As the global struggle for human rights with respect to sexual orientation and gender identity intensifies, and the Commonwealth seeks to negotiate its role in this process, what can be learned from studying national experiences together? This concluding chapter offers a comparative analysis of the country and regional case studies included in this book. The aim is to identify some commonalities across cases, and important differences, and hence to learn some lessons from processes of decriminalisation and change across the Commonwealth. We focus centrally on the decriminalisation issues, but also offer wider comments on sexual orientation and gender identity, and issues of
relevance to struggles over sexuality, gender and human rights.
Sexual orientation and gender identity are reaching the heart of global debates over human rights and social change. Such debates are particularly acute in many Member States of the Commonwealth of Nations. Following the criminalisation of same-sex sexual behaviour across the British Empire from the 19th century, decriminalisation in the Commonwealth commenced in England and Wales in 1967, yet struggles for the decriminalisation of same-sex sexual behaviour still continue in 42 of the 54 Commonwealth states. These struggles are increasingly accompanied by often-interrelated struggles for legal recognition of gender identity. A landmark 'reading down' of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code by the Delhi High Court in 2009 has given new hope to those fighting for decriminalisation in the states of the global South (Narrain and Gupta 2011; Baudh, this volume). However, in Uganda the reintroduction of an 'Anti-Homosexuality Bill' for parliamentary debate, ongoing in 2013, illustrates that progress cannot be taken for granted (Jjuuko, this volume). These developments show the need to analyse, in different contexts, how struggles for decriminalisation and human rights can succeed.
The recent emergence of homosexuality as a central issue in public debate in various parts of Africa has encouraged a stereotypical image of one homophobic Africa, often placed in opposition to a tolerant or depraved West. What is striking is that this image of Africa as homophobic is promoted by both traditionalists who insist that homosexuality is a Western intrusion and by the Western media that focus on homophobic statements from African political and religious leaders. What both neglect, however, is the existence of internal debate and disagreements among Africans on the subject of homosexuality. In this article we try to counter this image of a homophobic Africa with a more nuanced discussion, including a comparison of different trajectories in the emergence of homosexuality as a public issue in four countries (Senegal, Cameroon, Uganda, and South Africa). The comparison highlights considerable variations in the ways in which the issue became politicized. There is a world of difference, for example, between the image of the homosexual as un Grand (a rich and powerful “Big Man”) who imposes anal penetration as a supreme form of subjection (as in Cameroon or Gabon, where homosexuality is associated with witchcraft and other occult forces; compare Achille Mbembe's visionary evocation of a “phallocracy”) and the often quite marginal persons who become victims of gay persecution in other contexts. More insight into the variations of what is loosely and inaccurately called “homophobia” can help connect international pressures for decriminalization and protection to local circumstances. Working through local activists is crucial for the effort to counter homophobia in Africa.
https://discoversociety.org/2015/01/03/claiming-lgbti-human-rights-in-the-commonwealth-after-empire/
(Published online in The Conversation: http://theconversation.com/the-commonwealth-can-play-a-role-in-the-worldwide-struggle-for-lgbti-human-rights-29373)
British Colonialism and the Criminalization of Homosexuality examines whether colonial rule is responsible for the historical, and continuing, criminalization of same-sex sexual relations in many parts of the world. Enze Han and Joseph O’Mahoney gather and assess historical evidence to demonstrate the different ways in which the British empire spread laws criminalizing homosexual conduct amongst its colonies. Evidence includes case studies of former British colonies and the common law and criminal codes like the Indian Penal Code of 1860 and the Queensland Criminal Code of 1899. Surveying a wide range of countries, the authors scrutinise whether ex-British colonies are more likely to have laws that criminalize homosexual conduct than other ex-colonies or other states in general They interrogate the claim that British imperialism uniquely ‘poisoned’ societies against homosexuality, and look at the legacies of colonialism and the politics and legal status of homosexuality across the globe.
This article presents the first sustained social analysis of the Kaleidoscope Trust, the UK's leading social movement organization on LGBTI issues internationally, and its engagement with the Commonwealth ? particularly through forming The Commonwealth Equality Network, comprising national NGOs. A contribution is made to sociological and critical analysis of transnational LGBTI movements, through argument for a new analytical framework combining the sociology of human rights with a decolonizing, intersectional approach ? beyond the division between optimistic theories extending Western LGBTI progressive politics, or pessimistic postcolonial queer analyses. To investigate organizations' strategies leading to the Malta 2015 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the research utilizes sources of data including event observation and website sources, initiating analysis of online environments. The analysis deploys social movement theory to examine how and why Kaleidoscope selected the Commonwealth as a political opportunity structure to engage through strategies of framing and articulation of human rights. Invention of The Commonwealth Equality Network, shaped online and offline by imperial relations between core and periphery, is analysed via transnational public sphere and critical theories and argued to indicate a significant restructuring of global queer politics. It is contended that a consistently decolonizing and intersectional articulation of human rights is needed.
Book synopsis: Human rights in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity are at last reaching the heart of global debates. Yet 78 states worldwide continue to criminalise same-sex sexual behaviour, and due to the legal legacies of the British Empire, 42 of these – more than half – are in the Commonwealth of Nations. In recent years many states have seen the emergence of new sexual nationalisms, leading to increased enforcement of colonial sodomy laws against men, new criminalisations of sex between women and discrimination against transgender people.
Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in The Commonwealth: Struggles for Decriminalisation and Change challenges these developments as the first book to focus on experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) and all non-heterosexual people in the Commonwealth. The volume offers the most internationally extensive analysis to date of the global struggle for decriminalisation of same-sex sexual behaviour and relationships.
While homophobia is commonly characterized as individual and personal prejudice, this collection of essays instead explores homophobia as a transnational political phenomenon. Contributors theorize homophobia as a distinct configuration of repressive state-sponsored policies and practices with their own causes, explanations, and effects on how sexualities are understood and experienced in a range of national contexts. The essays include a broad range of geographic cases, including Cameroon, Ecuador, Iran, Lebanon, Poland, Singapore, and the United States. © 2013 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. All rights reserved.
During the debate over Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill in 2009 and 2010, journalists and activists warned of a wave of homophobia' in sub-Saharan Africa. In this article, I illustrate how this trope elides critical differences between contemporaneous incidents. I suggest that forms of anti-queer animus instead might be understood as the products of political economies, and use that approach to distinguish the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda, the arrest of Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza in Malawi, and the efflorescence of anti-LGBTI persecution in Senegal. A situated understanding of the political economies that generate these incidents enriches activist responses, and raises critical questions about solidarity and responsibility for activists and theorists alike.
A tide of oppression against sexual minorities disturbs current theories explaining the globalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights. But unlike the turn in race theory exploring rights as an outgrowth of marginalization, research on LGBT rights still focuses on structural changes or the influence of Western LGBT forms. This article argues that a powerful new and globalizing state homophobia is a convenient tool for state actors threatened by structural adjustment mandates from above and demands for greater opportunity from below. In such contexts, state actors and allies import ready-made LGBT identities as bogeymen, but in an unintended consequence, organizing among sexual minorities refracts those identities in transformative ways. From research in France, Uganda, and Egypt, this article concludes that some contexts, where the state targets LGBT rights claims as hostile, are better served through a politics of social and political capabilities over rights and identities to allow space for sexual minorities to develop.
Comparative European research about the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex asylum seekers in the European Union.
No Safe Refuge: Experiences of LGBT Asylum Seekers in Detention
- C L Bachmann
Still Falling Short: The Standard of Home Office Decision-Making in Asylum Claims Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
- B Asanovic
Gay Refugees Say They Have Been “Bullied” in Dutch Camps
- Bbc News
Home Office Accused of “Hypocrisy” After Adopting Pride Flag While Deporting Gay Rugby Player to Kenya. The Independent
- M Bulman
Personal interview. Former Chief Executive
- J Cooper
Czech Gay Asylum “Phallomertric Test
- Bbc News
Over Not Out: The Housing and Homelessness Issues Specific to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Asylum Seekers
- M Bell
- C Hansen
From ABC to DSSH: How to Prove That You Are a Gay Refugee? Free Movement
- S Chelvan
The Coalition: Our Programme for Government
- Hm Government
When LGBT Asylum Seekers Escape Persecution… Britain Locks Them Up
- R Hunt
Lobbying the Commonwealth on Decriminalization
- Gay Justice For
- Africans
Not a lesbian”: Adoronke Apata and the impossibly high threshold for asylum claims based on sexuality
- J Blair
Collaboration and Consensus: Building a Constructive Commonwealth Approach to LGBT Rights. London: The Royal Commonwealth Society; Kaleidoscope Trust
- L Brooks
- A Stewart
Theresa May Urged to Apologise for Britain’s Anti-gay Colonial Past. The Guardian
- P Crerar
Theresa May Says She Deeply Regrets Britain’s Legacy of Anti-gay Laws. The Guardian
- P Crerar
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Refugees and Asylum Seekers
- A De Jong
LGBT Asylum Seekers: A Toxic Mix of Homophobia, Misogyny and Ignorance Corrupts the Asylum System
- P Dillane
Canada’s Exclusion of Single Male Refugees May Exacerbate Syrian Conflict. The Guardian
- P Kingsley
Baroness Scotland Uses New Role as Secretary-General of the Commonwealth to Call for LGBT Rights
- M Leftly
Cairo, and Our Comprador Gay Movements: A Talk
- S Long
On “Gay Conditionality”, Imperial Power and Queer Liberation
- R Rao
Justice for Gay Africans: “Queen’s Commonwealth Charter Is Silent on Sexuality
- S Roberts
New Immigration Detention Policy for “Adults at Risk” Needs Urgent Review. The Guardian
- T Schleicher
Stonewall Top 100 Employers: The Definitive Guide to the Most Inclusive Employers in Britain
- Stonewall
Gay Asylum Seekers Face “Humiliation
- D Taylor
- M Townsend
Home Office Wouldn’t Believe I Was Gay: How Do You Prove It? The Observer
- M Townsend
- D Taylor
Home Office Recognising Fewer Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Refugees
- Uklgig
An Investigation into the Home Office’s Handling of Asylum Claims Made on the Grounds of Sexual Orientation
- J Vine
Canada Levels the Playing Field for LGBTI Refugees
- F Deif
- G Reid
Are the Days of Indefinite Detention Finally Numbered? The Justice Gap
- P Dillane
Britain Apologized for Its Colonial-era Anti-gay Laws But It Won
- F Edozien
Asylum in the Scene. QX Magazine
- C Godfrey
Racism and the Gay Scene. FS Magazine 148
- S Haggas
Asylum Seekers Face Eviction Four Weeks After Being Allowed to Stay in Britain
- T Mcveigh