ABSTRACT
Let’s begin with the obvious: it is indeed difficult for those of us who came of age in a world of presumed and unremarked homophobia to imagine the world we live in now. 1 The changes have been well-documented: in the media world where Orange is the New Black reigns and queers increasingly pop up in everyday dramas and award-winning comedies; in the political world where more gays and lesbians than ever are in local and national office and anti-discrimination laws are de rigueur for the Fortune 500 and (some) municipalities; in our intimate world where earnest heterosexuals declare their support for gay rights and their fondness for their gay friends, neighbors, family members. ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ has been repealed and marriage equality seems to have won the day, prompting more than one blogger to note that ‘supporting gay marriage is fashionable.’ 2
I could go on. But that story is well told. A familiar narrative of inevitable progress, it wraps us in a warm blanket of American exceptionalism. Indeed, it also allows those of the ‘liberal and tolerant’ West to displace homophobia onto others, whether Russian nationalists eager to demonize queers in a consolidation of a religious plutocracy or African politicians who use draconian antigay laws as a supposed bulwark against imperialist assimilation. It should be noted, of course, that these ‘outside’ homophobias are often funded and supported by home-grown American religious zealots who have moved on to more fertile pastures as explicit American homophobia becomes less tenacious a force.
