- Queer TikTok users are pointing out which countries have yet to legalize same-sex marriage.
- The new trend has gotten criticism from queer TikTokers who say it is ahistorical and racist.
- Experts say using same-sex marriage as a gauge for attitudes towards queer people abroad is inaccurate.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
In the last few weeks, LGBTQ TikTok users have posted videos labeling some nations as homophobic — and others as progressive — based on the legal status of gay marriage in the country.
The videos showcase queer people, moving to the beat of Yakko’s “Nations of the World,” standing under two banners. One that reads “countries where gay marriage is legal” and another that reads “countries where gay marriage is illegal.”
Though gay marriage has long been considered the barometer for evaluating a country’s attitudes towards queer people, experts say it doesn’t accurately gauge the daily lives of LGBTQ people.
For example in the US, gay marriage is legal but there are anti-LGBTQ bills being voted on across the country, including limitations to queer adoption.
“Anyone who uses same-sex marriage as the only metric is missing the full picture of LGBTQ people’s lives,” Jean Freedberg, Human Rights Campaign Director of Global Partnerships, told Insider.
Continuing, “There are many rights that the LGBTQ community is fighting for every day in every country in order to be able to live our lives as who we are, free from violence and discrimination.”
Gay marriage rights don’t guarantee safety for queer people
Freedberg told Insider the legalization of same-sex marriage doesn’t necessarily mean queer and trans people are treated fairly.
In the United States, queer people have been able to get legally married since 2015, but they weren’t legally protected from workplace discrimination until recently. Currently, trans people are facing an unprecedented onslaught of legislative attacks across 28 US states as well as increased rates of violence, particularly towards trans women of color.
While gay marriage is not recognized in Thailand, trans people have been able to access gender-affirming procedures since 1975, and the country is seen as a global destination for gender-affirming surgeries.
“We have to look holistically at the specifics of each country and each LGBTQ community, and gauge what legal rights that community has – or does not have – and how those protect them from the social, cultural, religious, economic exclusion that they face,” Freedberg told Insider.
In some countries, societal homophobia can be linked to colonization
Many of the countries called out in the TikTok videos for their antiquated LGBTQ marriage policies are located in the Global South. Countries like India, Peru, and Botswana have legacies of homophobia and transphobia tied to their colonization history.
For example, Professor Ruth Vanita, an expert on Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Montana, told Insider same-sex relationships were not seen as abnormal in India prior to British colonization.
“Before full-fledged colonization began, with Queen Victoria taking over the rule of India in 1857, same-sex sexuality was openly practiced and openly written about by many people, including rulers, courtiers, poets, courtesans, and ordinary people,” Vanita told Insider.
According to Vanita, Britain passed anti-sodomy laws in colonized countries across the globe as a means of outlawing queerness and imposing Christian colonial values.
“The same anti-sodomy law, in almost the same words, was introduced into all colonized countries, from America and Canada, to India, Pakistan, Malaysia, etc,” Vanita said.
“Apart from India, Nepal, and Thailand, very few countries in Asia and Africa have gotten rid of this law. In fact, most of their leaders and people mistakenly believe that the law springs from their indigenous cultures.”
In addition to same-sex relationships, indigenous cultures outside of the west, like Quariwarmi in Peru or Hijra of India, recognized genders outside of the western binary prior to colonization.
Tickles2900, a TikTok user with 2,375 followers, posted a video pointing out the irony of queer people from Western nations trivializing homophobia in formerly colonized nations. The video, which has amassed 26,600 likes, was even shared by “Pose” star Angelica Love Ross.
“These countries were not always like this, they had their own culture, traditions, and ideas on gender and sexuality but the west came into them, stole their resources, destabilized them, forced Christianity onto them, and left,” Tickles2900 said.
“These queer people that you’re mocking are suffering the consequences of actions that the west – the west that you are so proud to be legal in – took.”
TikTok creators living in countries where gay marriage is banned want to speak for themselves
Some creators from countries where same-sex marriage is not legal have used the trend to raise awareness about the fight for marriage equality abroad.
What many creators, like Batcavefreak, take issue with is the trend being used by queer people in the US to casually mention they would be “illegal” in certain countries, without taking into consideration what that means for queer people who actually live there.
“Still illegal in my country, and it’s frustrating,” wrote one TikTok user from Kenya. “The ‘I’m illegal in 72 countries’ jokes come off as insensitive when it’s an actual lived experience that we’re having to fight against every single day.”
Discothem, a TikTok creator from India, responded to the trend in multiple videos, only to have their content deleted for bullying.
“As somebody that’s from a country that only recently decriminalized homosexuality and in which same-sex marriage is still not legal, I feel really frustrated when I see these videos by white gay Americans because they don’t get it,” they said in their most recent TikTok.
“They don’t know what I go through on a day-to-day basis.”
Vanita said while some countries have homophobia imposed by extreme religious groups, like the Taliban, many formerly colonized countries have held on to anti-LGBTQ laws and sentiments — like those banning sodomy.
“In colonized countries in Africa and other parts of Asia (both Christian-majority and Muslim-majority countries), such as Malaysia and Indonesia, where there was no such law before colonialism, we now see an unfortunate and ironic governmental and popular embrace of the law as moral and as representing their own cultures,” Vanita said.
