Conservative Islamic Forces, Global LGBT Rights, and Anticipatory Homophobia in Indonesia
This chapter argues that the internationalization of LGBT rights discourses, including the global spread of marriage equality movements, has incited a conservative backlash in Indonesia. With specific attention to the relationship between Indonesia and We
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Conservative Islamic Forces, Global LGBT Rights, and Anticipatory Homophobia in Indonesia Hendri Yulius Wijaya
Introduction Recognition and protection of LGBT rights have increasingly become an integral component of citizenship discourse in a liberal capitalist democracy (Gross 2019, 314). The legalization of same-sex marriage in over twenty states not only marks the entry of gay and lesbian persons into dominant norms of citizenship but also becomes essential to claims for
This chapter is inspired by and derived in part from the author’s monograph, Intimate Assemblages: The Politics of Queer Identities and Sexualities in Indonesia (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), particularly from Chapter 5. The author would like to thank Marco Derks, Mariecke van den Berg, and Ruard Ganzevoort for their generous feedback. H. Y. Wijaya (B) Bandar Lampung, Indonesia
© The Author(s) 2020 M. Derks and M. van den Berg (eds.), Public Discourses About Homosexuality and Religion in Europe and Beyond, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56326-4_15
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LGBT citizenship, human rights, equality, and inclusion (Winter et al. 2018, 1–2). The number of countries that criminalize same-sex practices has declined by almost 20 percent in ten years (Keating 2017, 437), while global human rights movements have relatively succeeded in making LGBT rights more salient in international legal human rights norms and practices. The formulation of LGBT human rights principles (The Yogyakarta Principles) alongside support from intergovernmental organizations has also enabled LGBT activists in different parts of the world to form a more structured movement and frame their struggles within a human rights framework (Moreau 2017, 443). Complex challenges have also emerged from these developments. On the one hand, in non-Western societies where homosexuality is perceived irreconcilable with national identity, the global emphasis on sexuality rights as part of individual rights has triggered a conservative backlash. This rights discourse allows political and religious leaders to exploit LGBT issues to generate and consolidate public sentiments regarding the protection of traditional values and identity (Altman and Symons 2016, 108). In southeast Asia, for example, issues of LGBT rights have been used by postcolonial governments to generate nationalist imageries by defining their national identity against Western identity. In Malaysia, the government has associated homosexuality with the West and continued to support homophobia based on Islamic values (Offord 2011, 140). Similarly, Singapore’s government has also repeatedly constructed “same-sex equality and rights as a neo-colonial imposition of the West on so-called Asian values” (Yulius et al. 2018, 183). Opponents of LGBT rights in the Philippines “trotted out same-sex marriage and family values as grounds for resistance” (Weiss 2013, 158). On the other hand, critics of such globalizing forces of LGBT rights have pointed out the “costs” of positioning LGBT rights as an indicator of p
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