On Sex and Stigma: Bedding the Far-Right?

Far right actors increasingly stereotype Muslims as a threat to the liberties enjoyed by sexual and gender minorities in the liberal democracies. This strategy, leveraged, in part, to deradicalize far-right parties’ illiberal credentials and attract a new LGBTQ electorate, assumes that LGBTQ individuals are negatively predisposed towards Muslims because of an alleged incompatibility between Islam and liberalism. Such narratives ignore the low and muddied history of native ‘western’ religious opposition to the liberalism of LGBTQ inclusive rights pursued by Christians and Catholics. In countries where the minority religious group is portrayed as a new threat to LGBTQ rights but where the majority religious group has demonstrated itself, historically, to be a threat to LGBTQ rights, do LGBTQ individuals hold different levels of affect towards these groups? Combining original cross-national survey data from Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US, we provide strong empirical evidence that, across a diverse population of countries, LGBTQ individuals hold, simultaneously, more negative affect towards those who identify as Christians or Catholics and more positive levels of affect towards Muslims than their cis-heterosexual peers. In other words, levels of relative affect towards the majority religious denominations vis-à-vis the minority religious denomination is more likely to be negative for LGBTQ individuals. We complement these observational findings with a pre-registered conjoint experiment in which individuals are asked to decide between candidates applying for a tenancy agreement. Empirically, we find that despite claims of a potential queer panic against non-western religious denominations, LGBTQ individuals are not significantly more inclined to reject practising Muslims. These findings speak to an emergent literature that challenges rhetoric regarding the potential appeal and efficacy of homonationalist electoral strategies.