Queer Rights and the Triangulation of Western Exceptionalism

Given recent advances in queer visibility and rights within Western countries and internationally, the assumption around sexual issues is one of progress. Conversely, resistance to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and questioning (LGBTIQ) rights is understood as a lack of progress in the modernization of the relevant society or population. This article suggests that one must understand resistance in a more complex framework, focusing on the opposition between Muslim cultures and LGBTIQ politics to illustrate this argument. This article argues that one should understand the dialectic of Islam versus queer rights as a process of triangulation and should describe how the positioning of queer rights and Muslim homophobia within a triangulated model invokes a sense of Western exceptionalism. Consequently, this article argues that the deployment of queer rights both at “home” and “abroad” operates in a “homocolonialist” fashion that renders resistant populations inferior in relation to superior Western values, rather than as simply “lagging behind” the West.