Lawfare and the Global Dialectics of Homophobia and Homonationalism in Trinidad and Tobago

This paper pursues a case study of the global dialectics of homophobia and homonationalism in Trinidad and Tobago to show that understanding Global Southern homophobias as responses to Western neoimperialism may be helpful, but also incomplete. On the one hand, patterns and politics of homophobia in postcolonial TT may be seen as a sort of state-sponsored oppositional response to Western cultural imperialism, in particular the development of heteronationalist imperatives in TT’s postcolonial legal code and political discourse that simultaneously increased the scope of heterosexuality while intensifying the criminalization of homosexuality. However, early postcolonial heteronationalist developments represent more an attempt to emulate Global Northern nationalisms than a reaction to them. Yet over time, with dissolution of the postcolonial nationalist project in the era of neoliberal globalization, Trinbagonian homophobia was upregulated in response to Western imperialism, but this unfolded beyond the immediate jurisdiction of the state within transnationally-entangled religious communities—Hindu, Muslim, and Christian—adopting “conservative” positions enabling them to establish superficial solidarity. Meanwhile, the state is increasingly fractured between a Judiciary that condemns homophobia as unconstitutional and a “homophobic” Parliament. Employing the concept of lawfare, the case study examined here concerns the trajectory of a pioneering 2018 decriminalization case against the Government of Trinidad and Tobago and the politics it represents and activated at international and national levels, as well as the debate and dissension it ironically catalyzed within the local queer community.