An in-depth look at the global movement to curtail LGBTI rights—and how the LGBTI movement responds to it In the past three decades, remarkable progress has been made in numerous countries for the rights of individuals marginalized due to their sexual orientation and gender identity. The advancements in LGBTI rights can largely be attributed to the tireless efforts of the transnational LGBTI-rights movement, forward-thinking governments in pioneering nations, and the evolving human rights frameworks of international organizations. However, this journey towards equality has been met with formidable opposition. An increasingly interconnected and globally networked resistance, backed by religious-nationalist elements and conservative governments, has emerged to challenge LGBTI and women's rights, even seeking to reinterpret and co-opt international human rights law. In The Global Fight Against LGBTI Rights, authors Phillip M. Ayoub and Kristina Stoeckl investigate this complex landscape, drawing from over a decade of in-depth fieldwork and over 240 interviews with LGBTI activists, anti-LGBTI proponents, and various state and international organization actors. The authors explore the mechanisms and strategies employed by the conservative transnational movement, seeking to understand its composition and the construction of its agenda. With a wealth of empirical evidence and insightful analysis, this book is a valuable resource for scholars, policymakers, activists, and anyone interested in understanding the ongoing global battle for LGBTI rights.

"This book offers a sweeping and in-depth look at the global movement to curtail LGBTI rights, exploring both how this moral conservative movement functions-in terms of its key actors, claims, and venues of resistance-and how the LGBTI movement responds to it"--

One of TIME's 100 Must-Read Books of 2020. Longlisted for the 2021 Rathbones Folio Prize. "[Mark] Gevisser is clear-eyed and wise enough to have a sharp sense of how tough the struggle has been, and how hard it will be now for those who have not succeeded in finding shelter from prejudice." --Colm Tóibín, The Guardian A groundbreaking look at how the issues of sexuality and gender identity divide and unite the world today More than seven years in the making, Mark Gevisser’s The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers is an exploration of how the conversation around sexual orientation and gender identity has come to divide—and describe—the world in an entirely new way over the first two decades of the twenty-first century. No social movement has brought change so quickly and with such dramatically mixed results. While same-sex marriage and gender transition are celebrated in some parts of the world, laws are being strengthened to criminalize homosexuality and gender nonconformity in others. As new globalized queer identities are adopted by people across the world—thanks to the digital revolution—fresh culture wars have emerged. A new Pink Line, Gevisser argues, has been drawn across the globe, and he takes readers to its frontiers. Between sensitive and sometimes startling profiles of the queer folk he’s encountered along the Pink Line, Gevisser offers sharp analytical chapters exploring identity politics, religion, gender ideology, capitalism, human rights, moral panics, geopolitics, and what he calls “the new transgender culture wars.” His subjects include a Ugandan refugee in flight to Canada, a trans woman fighting for custody of her child in Moscow, a lesbian couple campaigning for marriage equality in Mexico, genderqueer high schoolers coming of age in Michigan, a gay Israeli-Palestinian couple searching for common ground, and a community of kothis—“women’s hearts in men’s bodies”—who run a temple in an Indian fishing village. What results is a moving and multifaceted picture of the world today, and the queer people defining it. Eye-opening, heartfelt, expertly researched, and compellingly narrated, The Pink Line is a monumental—and urgent—journey of unprecedented scope into twenty-first-century identity, seen through the border posts along the world’s new LGBTQ+ frontiers.

Between 2009 and 2014, an anti-homosexuality law circulating in the Ugandan parliament came to be the focus of a global conversation about queer rights. The law attracted attention for the draconian nature of its provisions and for the involvement of US evangelical Christian activists who were said to have lobbied for its passage. Focusing on the Ugandan case, this book seeks to understand the encounters and entanglements across geopolitical divides that produce and contest contemporary queerphobias. It investigates the impact and memory of the colonial encounter on the politics of sexuality, the politics of religiosity of different Christian denominations, and the political economy of contemporary homophobic moral panics. In addition, Out of Time places the Ugandan experience in conversation with contemporaneous developments in India and Britain--three locations that are yoked together by the experience of British imperialism and its afterlives. Intervening in a queer theoretical literature on temporality, Rahul Rao argues that time and space matter differently in the queer politics of postcolonial countries. By employing an intersectional analysis and drawing on a range of sources, Rao offers an original interpretation of why queerness mutates to become a metonym for categories such as nationality, religiosity, race, class, and caste. The book argues that these mutations reveal the deep grammars forged in the violence that founds and reproduces the social institutions in which queer difference struggles to make space for itself.

Focusing on the transnational LGBT movement that has gained unprecedented momentum, this study is a timely contribution to debates both scholarly and popular.

This collection of essays explores the notion, tools and challenges of human rights diplomacy. Human rights diplomacy is understood as the utilisation of diplomatic negotiation and persuasion for the specific purpose of promoting and protecting human rights. This book builds on discussions at a high-level workshop on the topic, organised by the University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre, the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation and the Adam Mickiewicz University of Pozna?, that was held in Venice.

Envisioning Global LGBT Human Rights: (Neo)colonialism, Neoliberalism, Resistance and Hope is an outcome of a five-year international collaboration among partners that share a common legacy of British colonial laws that criminalise same-sex intimacy and gender identity/expression. The project sought to facilitate learning from each other and to create outcomes that would advance knowledge and social justice. The project was unique, combining research and writing with participatory documentary filmmaking. This visionary politics infuses the pages of the anthology. The chapters are bursting with invaluable first hand insights from leading activists at the forefront of some of the most fiercely fought battlegrounds of contemporary sexual politics in India, the Caribbean and Africa. As well, authors from Canada, Botswana and Kenya examine key turning points in the advancement of SOGI issues at the United Nations, and provide critical insights on LGBT asylum in Canada. Authors also speak to a need to reorient and decolonise queer studies, and turn a critical gaze northwards from the Global South. It is a book for activists and academics in a range of disciplines from postcolonial and sexualities studies to filmmaking, as well as for policy-makers and practitioners committed to envisioning, and working for, a better future.

A panoramic view of gay rights, gay life, and the gay experience around the world. In Global Gay, Frédéric Martel visits more than fifty countries and documents a revolution underway around the world: the globalization of LGBT rights. From Saudi Arabia to South Africa, from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv, from Singapore to the United States, activists, culture warriors, and ordinary people are part of a movement. Martel interviews the proprietor of a “gay-friendly” café in Amman, Jordan; a Cuban-American television journalist in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; a South African jurist who worked with Nelson Mandela to enshrine gay rights in the country's constitution; an American lawyer who worked on the campaign for marriage equality; an Egyptian man who fled his country after escaping a raid on a gay club; and many others. He tells us that in China, homosexuality is neither prohibited nor permitted, and that much Chinese gay life takes place on social media; that in Iran, because of the strict separation of the sexes, it seems almost easier to be gay than heterosexual; and that Raul Castro's daughter, a gay rights icon in Cuba, expressed her lingering anti-American sentiments by calling for Pride celebrations in May rather than June. Ten countries maintain the death penalty for homosexuals. “Homophobia is what Arab governments give to Islamists to keep them calm,” one activist tells Martel. Martel finds that although the “gay American way of life” has created a global template for gay activism and culture, each country offers distinctly local variations. And around the world, the status of gay rights has become a measure of a country's democracy and modernity. This English edition, which has been thoroughly revised and updated, has received the French Voices Award for excellence in publication and translation, supported by a grant from the French-American Book Fund.

During the past four decades, the international lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights movement has made significant advances, but millions of LGBT people continue to live in fear in nations where homosexuality remains illegal. The International LGBT Rights Movement offers a comprehensive account of this global force, from its origins in the mid-nineteenth century to its crucial place in world affairs today. Belmonte examines the movement's goals, the disputes about its mission, and its rise to international importance. The International LGBT Rights Movement provides a thorough introduction to the movement's history, highlighting key figures, controversies, and organizations. With a global scope that considers both state and non-state actors, the book explores transnational movements to challenge homophobia, while also assessing the successes and failures of these efforts along the way.

An economist demonstrates how LGBT equality and inclusion within organizations increases their bottom line and allows for countries’ economies to flourish We know that homophobia harms LGBT individuals in many ways, but economist M. V. Lee Badgett argues that in addition to moral and human rights reasons for equality, we can now also make a financial argument. Finding that homophobia and transphobia cost 1% or more of a country’s GDP, Badgett expertly uses recent research and statistics to analyze how these hostile practices and environments affect both the US and global economies. LGBT equality remains a persistent and pertinent issue. The continued passing of discriminatory laws, people being fired from jobs for their sexual orientation and/or gender identity, harassment and bullying in school, violence and hate crimes on the streets, exclusion from intolerant families, and health effects of stigma all make it incredibly difficult to live a good life. Examining the consequences of anti-LGBT practices across multiple countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, India and the Philippines, Badgett reveals the expensive repercussions of hate and discrimination, and how our economy loses when we miss out on the full benefit of LGBT people’s potential contributions.