Conservative islamic forces, global LGBT rights, and anticipatory homophobia in Indonesia

Abstract

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 Western countries, especially the United States and Europe, this chapter thus explores the shifting discourses on homosexuality and transgender persons (and in the later period, LGBT persons) from the colonial period to present, to unpack the interplay between global and local politics. The discourse of same-sex marriage was significantly deployed in the recent anti-LGBT panic by state actors and conservative groups to position the West as "already in crisis" for its complicity in LGBT rights and liberal sexual cultures. In this context, anti-LGBT groups concluded that the subversion of traditional heterosexual family norms in Western countries has led to the outbreak of sexually transmitted diseases and a rapidly aging population. Finally, drawing on Weiss's notion of homophobic anticipatory countermovement, this chapter investigates how anti-LGBT groups imported the Western model of LGBT rights discourses to urge the government to criminalize same-sex relations. Further, they reinforced the binary of "Western/pro-LGBT" and "Indonesian/anti-LGBT" and positioned their homophobic countermovements as anticipatory actions to protect Indonesia's national identity.