How Targeting LGBTQ+ Rights Are Part of the Authoritarian Playbook
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Loading... - Francisca Morales
- 08 Sep 2022
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In the last three decades, protections for LGBT people’s rights have advanced rapidly in many countries and regions. However, rising populist authoritarianism poses a significant threat to this progress because abolishing sexual freedom is often at the heart of repressive political projects. The progress and backsliding in my home country, Colombia, illustrates the process of using democracy to erode rights.
In 2016, Colombia seemed like a legislative paradise for LGBT people. That year, a pinnacle of legislative success was a Constitutional Court ruling that secured a range of family rights for same-sex couples, including marriage and adoption, and protection of LGBT students in schools. But toward the end of the year, there was another exceptional event. In an effort to end a brutal, decades-long armed conflict, the Andean country held a plebiscite on a peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas. Unexpectedly, a small majority of 50.2 percent rejected the agreement after a bitter and polarizing campaign.
A key issue that mobilized the “no” electorate was the moral panic generated by the inclusion of gender, women rights, and LGBT-related provisions in the peace agreement, including a definition of gender and the explicit recognition of these populations as victims of the armed conflict. Extremist groups decried these provisions as imposing a “gender ideology,” tapping into a recent controversy about gender and sexuality education in schools.
Following the suicide of a queer student who had experienced severe bullying and discrimination in school, the Constitutional Court directed the government to carry out an existing law detailing measures to protect LGBT students from discrimination and to recognize diversity in sexual orientation and gender identity as a principle of comprehensive sexuality education. Conservative groups attacked this decision as imposing “gender ideology” on children, and social media became a battleground where the fate of Colombia’s peace was intertwined with the fate of LGBT people.
Many Colombians followed the conservative groups’ reasoning and conflated the peace agreement and the Court’s decision, believing the peace deal itself advanced “gender ideology” through gender and LGBT inclusive provisions. Again, social media—this time coupled with ballots—was the site of this mobilization. Political actors disseminated outrageous falsehoods regarding the peace agreement on social media networks, including WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter, all of which impacted the public perception of the plebiscite. Notably, several fueled the idea that if the peace agreement were approved, “gender ideology” would be included in the Constitution and society would be “homosexualized.”
This juxtaposition between success in court and the mobilization of anti-LGBT sentiment on the streets left me questioning the efficacy of using law reform as a primary strategy to advance LGBT rights. Six years after the rejection of the peace agreement referendum, I can see that what happened in Colombia was not an isolated incident; instead, it has now formed an integral part of a new authoritarian playbook that manipulates democratic institutions to undermine the rights of women and LGBT people. Read More...
