Anti-LGBTQ+ autocratic Orban declares victory in Hungarian elections. Besides parliamentary elections there was a referendum on LGBTQ+ issues about sex ed & availability of info on sex reassignment to kids.
https://www.losangelesblade.com/2022/04/03/anti-lgbtq-autocratic-orban-declares-victory-in-hungarian-elections/Ron DeSantis is following a trail blazed by a Hungarian authoritarian.
The Florida governor isn’t doing “competent Trumpism.”
He’s inventing American Orbánism.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/4/28/23037788/ron-desantis-florida-viktor-orban-hungary-right-authoritarian
Homophobes and Autocrats by Nina L. Khrushcheva - Project Syndicate
These leaders’ reliance on “hegemonic masculinity” – the idea that men should be strong, tough, and dominant – to bolster their position should not be surprising. Authoritarian states are fundamentally weak, and dictators are fundamentally insecure. So, they are constantly attempting to project strength.
But in today’s fast-changing world, ordinary people are feeling insecure, too – especially those who think that their traditionally “dominant” positions are being eroded. That makes them eager to embrace strongmen who promise a return to the order and predictability of a more socially rigid past.
In other words, people are afraid of change, and think they need macho leaders and patriarchal rules to protect them. Who is the sissy now?
“Viktor Orban wins crushing re-election victory,” tweeted far-right ideologue Rod Dreher about the Hungarian prime minister, who will now serve a fourth term in office. “Groomers hardest hit. @GovRonDesantis, you are onto something!”
Sometimes a tweet perfectly illuminates a political moment. This one brings together the Republican adulation of Orban as a model illiberal leader, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s seeming embrace of authoritarian policies, and the global right’s strategy of labelling supporters of democracy as “groomers,” or people associated with sex trafficking and pedophilia.
What Dreher’s sycophantic tweet really celebrates is the prominence of anti-LGBTQ platforms in far-right politics from Budapest to Boca Raton. DeSantis recently signed the so-called "Don't Say Gay" Bill into law: it limits K-3 classroom discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation and allows parents to potentially sue schools or teachers that engage these topics.
And in Hungary, April 3 also saw a vote on a referendum, billed as “child protection” from gay propaganda in schools, that continues Orban’s repression of the country’s LGBTQ population. A 2021 law already outlawed any depiction or discussion of LGBTQ identities and sexual orientations in schools, television, and advertising. It followed a 2018 ban on gender studies in higher education and the end of legal recognition of transgender and intersex people in 2020.
These developments are as predictable as they are horrifying. Anti-LGBTQ persecution is a constant among authoritarian governments around the world. Far-right regimes that uphold White racial privilege repress gays, but so do Communist states. Anti-colonial regimes such as those of Mobutu Sese Seko, which rejected White racial supremacy, were equally brutal.
Wherever strongmen rule, gays pay the price. Silencing and punishing those who engage in “nontraditional sexual relations,” as a 2013 Putin law terms them, has been central to authoritarian claims of defending the country and upholding “tradition.”
Authoritarian biopolitics is not just about encouraging the right elements of the population to procreate –fearmongering about declining White Christian birthrates recurs from the Fascists to Orban and Tucker Carlson –but also about removing the wrong elements from the public sphere, by silencing them, locking them up, or worse... (more)
https://lucid.substack.com/p/from-budapest-to-boca-raton-illiberal
Global Autocracy and LGBTQ Rights - Americans concerned with the preservation of democracy should pay attention to Chechnya and Egypt.
While considerable attention has been paid to Trump’s attacks on LGBTQ Americans, less time has been devoted on the part of the mainstream media to reporting on concurrent LGBTQ rights violations around the globe. Though we have been told what is happening in places such as Chechnya, Egypt, India, and Uganda, most reports do not delve deeply into why this level of LGBTQ persecution is happening at this moment, or how LGBTQ rights serve as a litmus test of sorts for creeping authoritarianism. LGBTQ rights are essential to understanding Trumpism and the rise of global autocracy. Americans concerned with the preservation of democracy should pay increased attention to global LGBTQ rights violations, particularly in Chechnya and Egypt.
https://jeffry-iovannone.medium.com/global-autocracy-and-lgbtq-rights-2d929831d12a
Why Autocrats Fear LGBT Rights - Masha Gessen
President Trump announced, by tweet, that transgender people would no longer be allowed to serve in the US military—a policy reversal that would directly and immediately affect thousands of people.
Many commentators immediately branded this move a distraction, an attempt to draw attention away from the Russian-conspiracy story, the health care battle, or anything else they deem more important than the president’s declaration that a group of Americans are second-class citizens. This is not only a grievous insult to transgender people but a basic failure to understand the emotional logic of Trumpism. This is a logic that Trump shares with most modern-day strongmen, and it was this logic that made his attack on LGBT rights so predictable, even while he was literally draping a rainbow flag over his body last year.
Trump got elected on the promise of a return to an imaginary past—a time we don’t remember because it never actually was, but one when America was a kind of great that Trump has promised to restore. Trumps shares this brand of nostalgia with Vladimir Putin, who has spent the last five years talking about Russian “traditional values,” with Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, who has warned LGBT people against becoming “provocative,” and with any number of European populists who promise a return to a mythical “traditional” past.
With few exceptions, countries that have grown less democratic in recent years have drawn a battle line on the issue of LGBT rights. Moscow has banned Pride parades and the “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations,” while Chechnya—technically a region of Russia—has undertaken a campaign to purge itself of queers. In Budapest,...
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/07/27/why-autocrats-fear-lgbt-rights-trump/
Autocrats Like Hungary's Orban Are Weaponizing LGBTQ Phobia to Retain Power
Hungary’s parliament this month approved legislation that outlaws school materials and other content for the young deemed to “promote homosexuality.” The effort to marginalize the LGBTQ community and link it with pedophilia has outraged many fellow European states and is straining the 27-member Union. Discrimination against gay and transgender people is an increasingly popular ploy for strongmen keen to distract attention from faltering popularity, and this is no exception. The personal, political and economic scars will endure.
The bloc’s more reactionary governments have been testing limits of what is permissible for some time, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who rails frequently about the evils of immigration and liberalism, is often leading the charge. He has already, among other steps, effectively banned adoption for same-sex partners and made it impossible for Hungarians to legally change their gender. This new law, ostensibly about child protection, makes inclusion even harder.
The sad reality is that there is nothing original here. Orban’s Fidesz party found inspiration in Russia’s 2013 law outlawing propaganda on “non-traditional sexual relations,” a significant step backward for a country that first decriminalized homosexuality in 1917 (and then again in 1993). Such legislation legitimizes homophobic rhetoric, reduces much-needed support for LGBTQ youth and, research has found, increased tolerance for violence against individuals. Attitudes have deteriorated: A survey in 2018 found that 63% of Russians believed in a concerted effort to destroy Russian values through gay propaganda. In Poland, ruling nationalists also made homophobia a key plank of 2020’s presidential campaign. In an interview Sunday backing Orban, Czech President Milos Zeman described transgender people as “utterly disgusting.”
So why are countries like Hungary, Russia and Poland, but also African nations like Uganda, moving in this direction when so much of the world is progressing on LGBTQ rights? It’s devastatingly simple. This is far less about sexual orientation than it is about whipping up fear, tightening control — and keeping rulers in power.
Consider what was going on in Russia when the 2013 law was passed, and what’s happening in Hungary today. Eight years ago, the Kremlin was dealing with street protests after Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency from a stint as prime minister. He had yet to feel the public opinion boost that came with annexing Crimea in 2014. Orban is suffering the consequences of a disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic that left Hungary with the highest per-capita death rate after Peru. Next year, he faces his tightest elections in more than a decade in power, thanks to a united opposition. He’s made similar attacks in the past on migrants, asylum seekers, Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, and the large Roma minority.
LGBTQ communities, unfortunately, lend themselves particularly well to getting caught in the crossfire. Not because gay or transgender people threaten the state. In fact, says Yiu-tung Suen, founding director of the Sexualities Research Program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, it’s the opposite. They are easier to cast as the bogeyman precisely because they are invisible and indistinguishable from the crowd, often wary of speaking out — and indeed of coming out — in hostile environments. Conspiracy theories thrive.
Richard Mole, professor of political sociology at University College London, points out that because gay and transgender individuals are more prominent abroad, it’s easy to portray all things LGBTQ as imported, a Western “ideology,” foreign-funded — and the polar opposite of what are portrayed as traditional values. Associating homosexuality and Western ideas generally is also an excellent way of delegitimizing opponents.
There is often, as in the case of Hungary’s new law, the smear of pedophilia, with the protection of children used as the excuse for repressive measures. Russia employed the same cover when clamping down on social media platforms used to great effect by opposition voices.
Creating an invented “other” is a powerful distracting tactic, so powerful that Orban, for one, has been able to gloss over high-profile sex scandals, even one that involves a close ally being caught fleeing an all-male party during lockdown by clambering down a drainpipe. And so tied is it to authoritarian control that it’s arguably a mark of deteriorating political discourse. In Hong Kong, the pro-democracy lawmakers who spoke up for freedoms, including those of LGBTQ citizens, are now largely in jail or exile, leaving pro-Beijing stalwarts to speak out against the Gay Games that the city is due to host next year as “dirty money.” (The territory’s leader later made more conciliatory comments).
This instrument isn’t used only in autocracies, either. The Republican Party in the U.S. is attempting to galvanize its base by seeking to deny gender-affirming medical treatment for young transgender people and regulating their participation in sports, overriding the concerns of parents and doctors.
The damage is first and foremost personal, as the lives of families and regular citizens are made miserable, even intolerable.
But tormentors harm everyone, including themselves. Lack of inclusion brings lost productivity, high turnover and wage gaps. Human resources are underdeveloped and poorly allocated, and potential is wasted. Investment goes elsewhere. There’s a clear link between LGBTQ rights and stronger economies, probably going both ways. The Williams Institute, a research center that studies sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy, found in a 2014 study of 39 countries, most of them developing, that one additional right in the Global Index on Legal Recognition of Homosexual Orientation was associated with $1,400 more in per capita gross domestic product. The human development index was positively correlated, too, reflecting better education and health.
This episode certainly won’t improve Hungary’s already troubling brain drain among the educated young, worsened by the government’s tighter grip on universities. Orban is worried enough that he’s seeking tax breaks for under-25s ahead of the election. He might have paused to consider the impact of a move that has cast a pall even over Hungary’s national soccer team.
Freedom is easier.
Autocracy and patriarchy are surging worldwide - but women are pushing
back
- Harvard Kennedy School
HKS faculty members Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks explain the relationships between rising authoritarianism, assaults on gender equity, and the power of nonviolent resistance.
How psychology has helped society accept homosexuality - Attitude change and acceptance have been facilitated through psychological science.
In 1977, 41 percent of Americans thought that gay or lesbian relations should be legal. By 2015, 68 percent thought so. In 1996, just 27 percent favored same-sex marriage. By 2016, 61 percent did (Gallup, 2016). Why have these attitudes changed? For many reasons, but psychological science has contributed in three important ways.
Through the 1970s
First, psychological studies disproved the belief that homosexuality is related to mental illness and criminality. Until the 1950's, most homosexual persons studied by psychologists and others were prisoners or mental patients, so it was easy to conclude that these were linked.
Evelyn Hooker, a brave psychologist at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), began undoing this belief in the early 1950s. A gay former student told her, "Evelyn, it is your scientific duty to study men like me." Hooker agreed, "He's right — we know nothing about them." (cited in Burr, 1993). When she told the psychiatry department chair she wanted to study normal homosexuals, he replied, "There is no such person!" (Hooker, 1993, p. 450).
Her work was difficult. Gay males she wanted to test feared she would betray their confidentiality. If she did, their “occupations and very lives were at risk” (Hooker, 1993, p. 451). Neither government nor businesses would hire homosexual persons.
Hooker gave the Rorschach test to thirty homosexual and thirty heterosexual males. Three Rorschach experts tried to distinguish the responses of the two groups but could not (Hooker, 1957). Many later studies with other measures led to the conclusion that homosexuality had no related pathology, and that gays and lesbians function equally well in work and in loving relationships. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental diseases. This recognition that homosexuality is not associated with any pathology has helped foster its acceptance.
Inheritance of homosexuality
A second contribution by psychology is the discovery that homosexuality is largely determined by heredity, not just a free choice. This discovery is important, as support for the rights of homosexual persons is strongly linked to the belief that it is something individuals are “born with” (Gallup, 2007). Most gay men and lesbians believe they have “no choice at all” in their sexual orientation (Herek, Norton, Allen & Sims, 2010).
In the 1990s, evidence for the inheritance of homosexuality grew rapidly. Bailey and Pillard (1991) compared the sexual orientation of male identical twins, fraternal twins and adopted brothers. They reasoned that if homosexuality is shaped by genetics, more closely related people should be more alike in their sexual orientation. Their findings showed that about 70 percent of homosexuality may be directly attributed to heredity. Later studies concurred, although the percentage was sometimes higher, sometimes lower. A network of genes, variations in maternal hormones during pregnancy, and their interactions may all play a part. There are perhaps multiple biological origins of homosexuality (Ngun & Vilain, 2014).
Far more Americans now accept that homosexuality is not just a choice. The percentage who believe homosexuality is something one is “born with” was just 13 percent in 1977 (Gallup, 2007), but in 2015, 51 percent believed that gays and lesbians are born as such (Gallup, 2015).
Anti-homosexual prejudice
A third major way that psychology has advanced the rights of homosexual persons is by turning the lens on those with strong anti-homosexual attitudes. The term “homophobia,” was introduced by Weinberg (1972). Based on his work with therapy patients, Weinberg concluded that anti-homosexual attitudes are often a real phobia, based upon a repressed fear that one is unconsciously homosexual. As experimental support, one study found that the penises of men with strong anti-gay attitudes became somewhat erect when they were shown a videotape of homosexual behavior, but those of other men did not (Adams, Wright & Lohr, 1996).
However, given limited evidence that anti-gay attitudes are a true phobia, most psychologists use the term "anti-homosexual prejudice.” Psychologists have learned quite a bit about its correlates and dynamics. Those who are anti-homosexual persons are also more likely to be racist, anti-feminist, and ethnocentric (McFarland, 2010). The strongest psychological predictor of anti-gay attitudes is the “authoritarian personality,” a cluster of attitudes that includes submissive attitudes toward strong leaders, a desire to punish all who violate conventional moral codes, and strong fear that conventional morality is breaking down (Whitley, 1999).
In summary, the acceptance of homosexual persons continues to advance, and the work of psychologists has contributed substantially. Psychologists have shown that homosexuality is not associated with mental illness or criminality, is largely determined by heredity, and that anti-homosexuality is related to other prejudices and to authoritarianism.
References
Adams, H.E., Wright, Jr., L.W., & Lohr, B.A. (1996). Is homophobia
associated with homosexual arousal? Journal of Abnormal Psychology,
105, 440-445.
Bailey, J.M. & Pillard, R.C. (1991). A genetic study of male sexual
orientation. Archives of General Psychiatry, 48, 1089-1096.
Burr, C. Homosexuality and biology. The Atlantic Monthly, 271, (3),
47-65 (March 1993).
Gallup. (2007). Tolerance for gay rights at high-water mark. Retrieved on
Jan. 14, 2012 at http://www.gallup.com/poll/27694/tolerance-gay-rights-highwater-mark.aspx.
Gallup (2015). Majority in U.S. Now Say Gays and Lesbians Born, Not Made.
Online at http://www.gallup.com/poll/183332/majority-say-gays-lesbians-born-not-made.aspx.
Gallup. (2016). Americans' Support for Gay Marriage Remains High, at 61
percent. Online at http://www.gallup.com/poll/191645/americans-support-gay-marriage-remains-high.aspx.
Herek, G., M., Norton, A.T., Allen, T.J., & Sims, C.L. (2010).
Demographic, psychological, and social characteristics of self-identified
lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults in a U.S. probability
sample. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 7, 176-200.
Hooker, E. (1957). Male homosexuality in the Rorschach. Journal of
Projective Techniques, 22, 33-54.
Hooker, E. (1993). Reflections of a 40-year exploration: A scientific view
on homosexuality. American Psychologist, 48, 450-453.
McFarland, S. G. (2010). Authoritarianism, social dominance, and other roots
of generalized prejudice. Political Psychology, 31, 425-449.
Ngun, T.C., & Vilian, E. (2014). The biological basis of human sexual
orientation: Is there a role for epigenetics? Advances in Genetics, 86,
167-184.
Weinberg, G. (1972). Society and the healthy homosexual. New York: St.
Martins Press.
Whitley, B. E. (1999). Right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance
orientation, and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 77, 126-134.
About the author
Sam McFarland, a native of Tennessee, received his doctorate in social psychology from Vanderbilt in 1971 and then taught at Western Kentucky University (WKU) through 2013. His early research focused on the psychology of religion, authoritarianism and prejudice, while his more recent work has been mainly on human rights and “identification with all humanity.” During his career, he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in the former Soviet Union (1989), director of WKU’s University Honors Program (1990-1998) and president of the International Society of Political Psychology (2009-2010). From 1993 through 2013, he taught an honors seminar entitled “Understanding Human Rights.” He was named a WKU Distinguished University professor. Following retirement from teaching, he wrote “Human Rights 101,” referred to in the article, and is now writing a college-level reader about 20 people whose lives and work led to great advances in human rights.
https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/ptn/2018/05/society-accept-homosexuality
In Defense of Tradition: Religiosity, Conservatism, and Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage in North America - PMC
Abstract - Arguments opposing same-sex marriage are often made on religious grounds. In five studies conducted in the United States and Canada (combined N = 1,673), we observed that religious opposition to same-sex marriage was explained, at least in part, by conservative ideology and linked to sexual prejudice. In Studies 1 and 2, we discovered that the relationship between religiosity and opposition to same-sex marriage was mediated by explicit sexual prejudice. In Study 3, we saw that the mediating effect of sexual prejudice was linked to political conservatism. Finally, in Studies 4a and 4b we examined the ideological underpinnings of religious opposition to same-sex marriage in more detail by taking into account two distinct aspects of conservative ideology. Results revealed that resistance to change was more important than opposition to equality in explaining religious opposition to same-sex marriage.
Keywords: religiosity, conservatism, system justification, sexual prejudice, same-sex marriage
[T]he attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the
family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper . . .
—Benedict XVI (2012)
Despite an improving legal landscape for sexual minorities, negative attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women persist in North America, and same-sex marriage remains a topic of considerable debate (Waters, Jindasurat, & Wolfe, 2016). Arguments opposing same-sex marriage are often made on religious grounds. Although the relationship between religiosity and opposition to same-sex marriage has been noted often in mainstream media and academic outlets (Babst, Gill, & Pierceson, 2009), the question of why people oppose same-sex marriage has not been adequately addressed at the level of social, personality, and political psychology. In the current research program, we investigated whether religious opposition to same-sex marriage has ideological roots in the desire to maintain the societal status quo. Despite the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in 2015 to legalize same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015), resistance lingers in the United States and elsewhere. Therefore, the psychological processes underlying religious and ideological opposition to same-sex marriage are of considerable theoretical and practical interest.
In this article, we draw on the theory of political ideology as motivated social cognition (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003) and system justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost & van der Toorn, 2012) to shed light on the relationship between religiosity and opposition to same-sex marriage. Specifically, we examine a model in which religious opposition to same-sex marriage is, at least in part, accounted for by sexual prejudice and motivated by conservative tendencies to defend the status quo. In five studies conducted in Canada and the United States, we investigated the hypotheses that religiosity would be related to opposition to same-sex marriage through sexual prejudice (Hypothesis 1), and that these effects would be explained, at least in part, by endorsement of conservative ideology (Hypothesis 2), with resistance to change being a more important factor than opposition to equality (Hypothesis 3).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5665159/?report=classic
State Sponsored Homophobia report | ILGA
https://ilga.org/state-sponsored-homophobia-report
