ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how political homophobia political elites public denigration of non-heterosexual persons, gender minorities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) activism emboldened grass-roots anti-LGBTI organising in Liberia. The Liberian civil war continues to shape Liberians lives and political organising, particularly LGBTI rights advocacy. Since 2003, Liberia has undergone seismic social and political shifts. Religious and nationalist arguments to resist same-sex sexualities bolstered one another in the New Citizens Movements anti-LGBTI rights campaign, much in the way that public homophobias in different African societies rely on religious and nationalist logics for their potency. Organisers viewed the New Citizens Movement as repudiating the unwanted encroachment of homosexuality into Liberia, promoted by Western interference. In contrast with some antigay mobilisation in other African nations and elsewhere in the world that has escalated into violence, New Citizens Movements members discouraged adherents from using violence to punish and isolate LGBTI persons and activists.
