����vlog����

The views expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights or Harvard Kennedy School. These perspectives have been presented to encourage debate on important public policy challenges.

Queerness as a Battlefield: How Anti-Democrats Both Import & Export Hate

Rémy Bonny is the Executive Director of Forbidden Colours, a pan-European LGBTQI+ human rights organization based in Brussels. We invited Remy to speak at our European Conference at Harvard because of his cutting-edge work investigating the illiberal strategies being deployed across Russia, Hungary, and the United States. As one of the leading researchers on the transnational anti-LGBTIQ+ movement, Rémy has exposed how illiberal actors have forged cross-border alliances to roll back queer rights and democratic norms alike.

In the piece below, Remy traces the roots of this global playbook, how queer lives became the staging ground for a broader unraveling of democracy. To counter the coordinated assault on LGBTQI+ rights and democratic ideals, this kind of analysis is not just useful, it is necessary. {Diego Garcia Blum} 

The target is not just queer people: it is democracy itself.

What do leaders in Moscow, Kampala, Budapest, and Washington DC have in common? A shared hostility toward the fundamental rights of LGBTIQ+ people, and a shared playbook. Around the world, so-called ‘illiberals’ are uniting around queerphobia not only as an attempted culture war, but as a political weapon. The target is not just queer people: it is democracy itself.

When Russia hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics, the democratic West seemed to be united in its envy towards the recently introduced “anti-gay propaganda law”. Back then, the liberals of the world were waving flags as if the rainbow was taking over the atmosphere. The struggle for queer liberation—its slogan turned into “it gets better”. The never ending positive trendline of marriage equality and Prides attracting millions of progressives gave many the feeling of euphoria. Some might say it was the queer movement’s Fukuyama moment.

Meanwhile, ultraconservative groups retreated from the frontline. Not to give up their fight against equal rights but to regroup. They strategized to consolidate their influence deeper inside policymaking and power structures. The Christian Right started forging new alliances with political leaders in both democratic and authoritarian countries – often with groups they previously fought against.

Around 2010, the annual gathering of the world’s Christian Right, the World Congress of Families, drafted its new strategies. The playbook included the absorption of non-democratic nations in the execution of the playbook, with the scope moving from political activism to elite advocacy.

The first time we saw the playbook deployed was with Russia’s 2013 “anti-gay propaganda law”. It became a template on how to silence the queer movement, who by then globally became the most visible civil rights movement.

The Russian anti-queer playbook was since used by so-called ‘illiberal’ leaders across the world as the path to follow to silence opposition and gain international influence amongst conservatives

The years before, Putin’s regime already left the democratic path for good. The liberal West was back as its external enemy. The later declassified Russian National Security Strategy (2015) shows that the regime sees the “traditional Russian spiritual and moral values” as critical for the nation’s sovereignty. It stems from the centuries-old conspiracy theory that homosexuals corrupt children, the future of the nation. From this moment, the attack on the rights of LGBTIQ+ people became a central strategy in dismantling democratic norms. Russian oligarchs, such as Konstantin Malofeev, and intelligence units, such as the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, outsourced Russia’s soft power strategy to organizations such as the World Congress of Families.

The Russian anti-queer playbook was since used by so-called ‘illiberal’ leaders across the world as the path to follow to silence opposition and gain international influence amongst conservatives. Anti-LGBTIQ+ propaganda laws were first exported to republics formerly occupied by the Soviet Union, then to European Union member states, and now increasingly to the United States.

But the export of hate from Russia never happened in a vacuum. From the very beginning it was amplified by US-based hate groups, such as Alliance Defending Freedom and Family Watch International. From ‘Don’t Say Gay’-laws echoing Russia’s “anti-gay propaganda law” to “trans bathroom laws”, the fight against the equal rights for the LGBTIQ+ communities rose to the epicenter of the conservative political debate. Not surprising it went hand in hand with the erosion of democratic norms when anti-LGBTIQ policymakers rose in power.

Their strategy is always the same: start by attacking gender diversity, and gradually expand the assault to queer lives in all their forms.

What we see happening in the US now, is already more advanced in the European Union. While Hungary and Bulgaria introduced their versions of Russia’s “anti-gay propaganda laws”, policymakers tabled similar bills in Italy, Poland, Slovakia and Romania over the last years. The European populist right have identified the queer communities as their enemy. Their strategy is always the same: start by attacking gender diversity, and gradually expand the assault to queer lives in all their forms.

Their motivation is never based on genuine belief. Instead, anti-LGBTIQ+ policies are a distraction from their anti-democratic political agendas. While the public is focused on fabricated culture wars, they quietly dismantle other democratic norms, such as academic and press freedom, judicial independence, and entrenching high-level corruption.

In the Hungarian case, Orban’s regime was even using anti-LGBTIQ+ policies to mask their collapsing health system during the COVID-19 pandemic. On the very same day the first lockdown was announced, the Parliament also tabled a bill to ban adoptions by same-sex couples. On the day the second lockdown was announced, members of parliament announced they wanted to ban legal gender recognition.

What Orban also copy-pasted from Putin was the linking of their internal scapegoat to the external enemy: the European Union.  However, the reality is very different. Over the last years, Hungary has made the undermining of the rights of LGBTIQ+ people a priority of its foreign policy. They’ve done that through the support of several government-owned NGOs (GONGOs), such as MCC Brussels and XY Worldwide, and the organization of international anti-LGBTIQ+ conferences in Budapest, such as CPAC Hungary and the Budapest Demographic Summit. MCC Brussels is Orban’s version of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies. They received 1.3 billion euros in government subsidies for their influence operations in Brussels, to spread the Hungarian narrative. Since 2023, MCC Brussels organized and supported several anti-LGBTIQ+ gatherings in the political capital of the EU.

Through CPAC and XY Worldwide, who receives support from Elon Musk, Orban has linked its anti-LGBTIQ+ policies closely to the Trump administration. They have copy-pasted Hungary’s (Read: Russia’s) playbook into Project 2025, the unofficial agenda of Trump’s presidency. Today, we see that US embassies across the world are demanding companies to drop DEI policies when they want to do business with the US. 

But while the playbook of the anti-rights movement is basically the same everywhere, the main reason for their successes is not their strategies, nor the public support that they receive. It is the inadequate response from all those who claim to be democrats to the attacks on the fundamental rights of queer people that helps the anti-rights movements most.

Standing up for human rights and democracy is more than just waving a rainbow flag and writing diplomatic statements sharing “concern” when rights are infringed upon. The selectivity in defending human rights of institutions, such as the European Commission, allows the anti-rights movement to flourish.

Since 2021, Forbidden Colours is leading a European campaign to take down Hungary’s “anti-gay propaganda law”. Only after we made EU member states threaten to sue the European Commission, the Commission took legal action against Hungary. In the end, we convinced 16 member states, representing more than 2 out of 3 citizens, to support the EU lawsuit against Hungary’s anti-LGBTIQ+ law. It is currently standing as the largest ever lawsuit against a member state at the EU’s highest court.

The global attack on the rights of LGBTIQ+ people is not a culture war, it is a deliberate, coordinated assault on democratic values.

But this action by the Commission was a rare moment. They took no action against Bulgaria, who in 2024 introduced its version of Hungary’s and Russia’s “anti-gay propaganda law”. When Orban banned Budapest Pride this year, 300.000 people took the streets of Budapest in June but the Commission stayed silent. Apparently the defense of EU law and human rights is only important when the pressure (by other member states) is high enough.

The global attack on the rights of LGBTIQ+ people is not a culture war, it is a deliberate, coordinated assault on democratic values. If we fail to act, queerness will remain the testing ground for authoritarianism. But where governments hesitate, civil society must lead. The defense of democracy begins wherever dignity is under threat.