One
Setting the agenda

It is tempting to see a new Cold War being played out around homosexuality. In 2014 the Winter Olympic Games took place at Sochi on the Russian Black Sea. The Games were carefully planned to enhance the reputation of Russia and its newly (re-)elected president, Vladimir Putin. But they followed the introduction of anti-homosexual-propaganda laws, disguised as protecting cultural values,1 which in turn led to calls for boycotts of both the Games and some of the major corporate sponsors.

No country refused to participate in the Sochi Games, but the United States made its attitude clear by not sending any high-ranking official, and naming a delegation headed by several openly lesbian and gay sporting figures, including tennis player Billie Jean King. Other major political leaders and most European royalty also refused to attend the opening ceremony, although the king and queen of the Netherlands, flanked by Britain's Princess Anne and members of the Monaquesque and Luxembourgeois royal families, were present. The Dutch decision was somewhat surprising, given the extent to which the country has been a leader in promoting gay rights, and came in for some criticism at home. Nor were attempted boycotts always successful; a seemingly spontaneous boycott of Stolichnaya vodka collapsed when it became clear that the vodka actually came from Latvia, not Russia. Following the Sochi Games the International Olympic Committee announced new rules for the selection of host cities, including a requirement of full non-discrimination, which have yet to be tested.

In the controversies over Sochi and Eurovision one could see cultural battles around gay rights attaining a new international prominence. Such a coordinated international campaign around gay rights in an authoritarian country is unprecedented, even if the protests around Sochi were essentially symbolic. But homosexuality is constantly in the news. In one random day as we started writing this book (30 August 2014) the local Australian press carried stories about the first openly gay member of the Chilean navy, and commentary on same-sex marriage, alongside stories about the brutal lashings of a Saudi man caught using his Twitter account to arrange dates with other men. Not only do these stories point to the role of the state in regulating sexuality, they also underline the extent to which both public attitudes and state control appear to be moving in different directions in different parts of the world.

During the Cold War one of the few things on which both Soviets and the United States could agree was that homosexuality was a dangerous perversion. Indeed both countries saw an increasing fear and rejection around homosexuality in the 1950s, following a brief period after the Russian Revolution when the Soviets seemed to pursue greater tolerance, and the greater sexual freedoms that emerged in the United States after World War II. By the 1970s the social and cultural changes which are loosely associated with 'the sixties' had begun to challenge the dominant assumptions in most western countries that homosexuality was an illness, a sickness or a deviance. The Soviet Union was far slower to move in this direction, and although small gay movements emerged in a few non-western countries, homosexuality, indeed any deviation from 'traditional' assumptions about sexuality and gender, remained heavily stigmatized. While there have been huge shifts in general views of sexuality in the United States this century - epitomized in increasing support for same-sex marriage - the Putin regime has drawn on both the Stalinist and Orthodox traditions to increase persecution of people on the basis of their homosexuality.

After the re-election of both President Obama and President Putin (the latter after an obligatory period as prime minister) homosexuality emerged as a possible theme of a cultural Cold War. Both governments used queer rights as a weapon to mobilize international opinion, Obama using the language of human rights as against Putin's invocation of traditional cultural values. In the Russian rhetoric directed at Ukraine during the conflicts of 2014 there was a consistent strain of defending 'tradition' against the homosexual degeneracy of the European Union.

In October 2014, the Economist magazine, which is an extremely influential mouthpiece of liberal thought, published a cover story titled 'The Gay Divide'. The lead article described change in attitudes to homosexuality, particularly in the west, Latin America and China, as 'one of the wonders of the world'. Just why these changes have occurred so rapidly is a product of a number of factors, including the development of far greater gender equity, affluence and new understandings of human rights. These changes have not occurred without some backlash, as in various legislative proposals in the United States in reaction to growing support for same-sex marriage that seek to allow businesses to refuse services to 'LGBT people' in the name of religious freedom.

Yet the Economist also pointed to a growing global divide, in which homosexual behaviour was illegal in seventy-eight countries and punishable by death in about eight. While countries in Europe and the Americas have moved towards including sexuality in anti-discrimination legislation and legalizing same-sex marriage, other parts of the world have seen a dramatic increase in state-sanctioned homophobia. Legislation aimed at further restricting homosexual activity, often under the guise of protecting traditional values and families, has been introduced in a number of countries, and there are reports of increased violence against both homosexuals and trans* people, including rape, murder and torture. (The term 'trans*' refers to the full diversity of transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming identities.)

The Economist story concluded that '[f]or those who cling to the notion of progress, it is hard to believe that tolerance will not spread'. But progress is never inevitable, and there are many parts of the contemporary world where there appears to be a retreat from notions of individual freedoms and human rights in favour of extreme religiosity or state authoritarianism. Most authoritarian regimes target sexually and gender diverse people, or, at best, refuse to protect them against abuse, although this seems least apparent in the countries of east Asia. The increased salience of sexuality means that LGBT rights are increasingly targeted by authoritarian governments for symbolic purposes, as in the crackdown on Istanbul's pride march in 2015.

One might question the Economist's claim that China's acceptance of homosexuality is a 'wonder of the world', although there have undoubtedly been major shifts since the sexually repressive period of the Cultural Revolution, when homosexuality was officially regarded as a mental illness and a species of 'hooliganism'. Certainly the growth of affluence and urbanization has made it possible for some men, and fewer women, to live more openly as homosexual, and a new identity emerged, sometimes called tongzhi, a term which links traditional concepts of sexual and gender non-conformity to a global queer identity.2 The Chinese Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in 2001, and there is a visible queer world in major cities. However, this is available to relatively small numbers of Chinese, and many homosexuals enter into heterosexual marriages - sometimes between a lesbian and a gay man - to satisfy the dominant pressure from family and society. Nor are Chinese authorities sympathetic to anything which might look like a gay political movement, although there is official tolerance of social networks.

Other than Russia, no country has attracted so much attention for its anti-homosexual policies as Uganda. Like other former British colonies Uganda retained the colonial-era laws against 'carnal knowledge against the order of nature'; in 2005 it adopted a Constitutional amendment prohibiting 'marriage between persons of the same sex', even though no one in Uganda was advocating such marriages. Under pressure from both local and American Protestant evangelists Uganda moved away from successful condom promotions as part of the earlier response to HIV to a policy of abstinence before marriage, and anti-homosexual rhetoric grew dramatically. In 2009 an 'anti-homosexual bill' was introduced into the Ugandan Parliament with draconian penalties; debate around this Bill drew international attention, and it was finally passed in 2013, after considerable anti-homosexual violence including the murder of gay activist David Kato. After that law was annulled by the High Court on technical grounds, new legislation was introduced despite strong international condemnation.

One of the reasons the Ugandan case received such attention was that it led British prime minister David Cameron to speak of cutting development assistance to countries which did not respect gay rights, unleashing considerable protest from both governments and civil society groups in Africa and the Caribbean. Cameron's statement was particularly significant because it came in connection with a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (Perth 2011) where clear divisions emerged over decriminalization of homosexuality, a live issue in most countries of the Commonwealth. Along with statements by Secretary Clinton and President Obama...