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There is a perceived increase in incidents of rhetoric, legislation and vigilantism against sexual minorities and their allies across Africa. This 'African homophobia' is counter to human rights conventions, public health best practices and sound economic development. The paper reviews areas of progress as well as the broad economic and cultural contexts for the experiences of African sexual minorities.

Existing research on consociationalism largely debates whether or not it exacerbates ethnic cleavages. Yet, although power sharing in some circumstances can harden ethnonational identities, a correlative consequence may be to further marginalise groups outside the bounds of official inclusion. While an emerging corpus of literature looks at women and power sharing, little research has been done regarding the implications of power sharing for sexual minorities. I argue in this article that consociationalism does impact on sexual minorities in complex ways. To account for variations in types of consociationalism, I examine two divergent forms – liberal and corporate – that demonstrate differences in relation to sexual minorities. Thus, I compare sexual minorities within Northern Ireland's liberal structure with those in Lebanon's corporate form. I find that differences between liberal and corporate consociations generate important, albeit complicated, implications for sexual minorities.

Recent rulings by the Nepalese Supreme Court demonstrate the increasingly progressive society for sexual minorities in the high mountain country. While the current government continues to fight these orders, Nepal has quietly become known as a friendly destination for non-binary genders.

AbstractPrevious evidence shows that heterosexual people perceive heterosexual status to be more fragile than homosexual status. However, research has not yet investigated whether sexual minorities have similar, or diverging, perceptions of the fragility of sexual orientation. With a sample that included 89 heterosexual and 80 sexual minority participants, we investigated the fragility of heterosexuality using a between-participants design in which participants indicated their agreement with gender neutral statements about the fragility of either heterosexual or homosexual status. Contrary to our expectations we found evidence of Fragile Heterosexuality perceptions regardless of participants' sexual orientation. Additionally, we explored the potential moderating effects of social-dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism and prejudice against gay/lesbian people on this Fragile Heterosexuality effect. For sexual minority participants, high levels of social dominance orientation moderated (i.e., increased) the perceived fragility of heterosexual identity relative to homosexual identity. No other inter-group ideology was a significant moderator. These findings highlight that heterosexuality is perceived as more fragile by both heterosexual and sexual minority individuals. Implications and possible avenues for future research are discussed.

This qualitative study attempts to critically understand the lives of Christian sexual minorities (CSM) in post-colonial Hong Kong. In recent years, local scholars have noted the rise of a Christian-led, mostly evangelical-driven influence on sexual politics that is alarmingly conservative. Yet, few have made the empirical effort to explore the reception of this influence on an everyday level by Christians who identify as sexual minorities. Meanwhile, the existing literature on LGBTQ identities and communities in Hong Kong pays perfunctory attention to the fluid and productive dimensions of religious faith, which can inspire and be reshaped by sexual desires and intimate relationships. With the use of in-depth interviews conducted from November 2013 to September 2014 (n=16), this study aims to fill these gaps by foregrounding the agency of CSM in working through the perceived conflict between their sexuality and faith, while staying alert to new constraints and power relations created in the process. Drawing on four theoretical strands – Foucault's analysis of power/ knowledge, the concepts of lived religion and reflexive spirituality, discussions on intersectionality popularized in the past decade, as well as emerging critiques of queer and secular fundamentalism – I developed a 3D model to make sense of what I call the CSM conflict, which could be understood as a specific and meaningful form of experience and existence characterized by recognition, negotiation and transformation: Recognition refers to how institutional agents – primarily the church, the school, and the family – conspire to produce a body of heteronormative knowledge that forces CSM to recognize a seeming conflict between their sexuality and the Christian faith. Negotiation refers to the manifold ways CSM cope with this conflict and negotiate their theological beliefs, religious practices, sexual desires and intimate relationships. They demonstrate the dynamic construction of a reflexive, individualized spirituality that is tied with the continued search for a sense of belonging and community. Transformation, finally, refers to how CSM remain faithful and go beyond the conflict to transform it into an empowering, intersectional experience that enables them to productively engage with the secular world (e.g. through policy advocacy, community outreach and political activism), while withstanding persistent prejudice in secular LGBTQ spaces. I conclude that CSM pose a timely challenge to the current trend of queersecular fundamentalism in sexuality studies, which tends to essentialize queerness and categorize human subjects as either "boringly hetero/homonormative" or "interestingly non-normative". Whereas religion is often disparaged as a normative factor within this simplistic framework, CSM not only reclaim the productive and subversive potential of religious faith, but also help us overturn this binary thinking by showcasing the intersectionality of identity and blurring the boundary between normativity and non-normativity. This study therefore represents an urgent call for a more open-minded ethos towards religion within the circles of LGBTQ studies. It also contributes to the sociology of sexuality and enriches the intellectual tradition of sexual storytelling by highlighting the role of religious faith in the intersectional making of sexual identity. ; published_or_final_version ; Sociology ; Master ; Master of Philosophy

For sexual minorities in Africa, fake news is nothing new. However, with the arrival of self-controlled digital platforms, sexual minorities are presented with new ways to counter coverage that misrepresents the community. Inspired by affordance theory and agenda-setting theory, this study explores whether self-controlled digital platforms are used to challenge false media reports on sexual minorities in Uganda, and if so, to what extent. Through a cross-media research design, the largest English-language daily newspaper, the government-owned New Vision, is analysed and positioned against the main sexual minority network's (SMUG?s) public Facebook and Twitter accounts at two points in time in 2013/2014 and in 2018. The study finds that, although social media channels afford direct engagement with false media reports, the platforms are under-utilised as spaces regarding countering false reporting on LGBTQIs. Furthermore, this lack of engagement with the media was found to be stable over time.