<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For decades, the \u201chomosexual movement\u201d imagined itself \u2013 and was imagined \u2013 as a natural extension of left\u2011wing struggles: anti\u2011capitalist, feminist, anti\u2011racist, internationalist. Early post\u2011Stonewall <\/a>organisations such as the Gay Liberation Front explicitly aligned with revolutionary liberation fronts, anti\u2011war campaigns and Black and feminist movements. Yet, half a century later, the landscape is far more complex: some LGBT+ people now see themselves reflected in right\u2011wing, even far\u2011right, discourses, without necessarily feeling they are betraying \u201ctheir side\u201d.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Historians like Jeffrey Weeks and Kenneth Plummer show that homosexual emancipation initially took shape in the wake of socialist and radical left movements, in Europe and North America alike. From Magnus Hirschfeld in Germany to the FHAR in France, and from the British Gay Liberation Front to collectives such as \u201cGay Left\u201d, the fight against homophobia was inseparable from a broader critique of class, gender and race relations.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In this framework, being gay primarily meant being on the side of the \u201coppressed\u201d: against the police, against psychiatrisation, against moral order, and therefore instinctively alongside progressive movements. This memory still shapes a large part of queer activist spaces, which continue to see LGBT+ equality as tied to social justice, migrant rights and feminism.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Electoral studies show that sexual minorities, on average, remain more likely to vote for left\u2011wing or centre\u2011left parties than heterosexuals. Analyses of the \u201clavender vote\u201d suggest this support stems from parties\u2019 stronger commitment to LGBT+ rights, but also from more progressive values on social issues.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n However, this apparent homogeneity is eroding: some gay voters \u2013 especially white, male and more affluent \u2013 are turning away from left\u2011wing parties, which they see as overly focused on other groups (migrants, religious minorities, precarious youth, etc.). In several European countries, surveys indicate that mainstream right\u2011wing parties and, to a lesser extent, parts of the radical right are attracting a small but growing share of LGBT voters.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n To understand this partial shift, we also need to look at how segments of the right have appropriated LGBT\u2011rights rhetoric. Political scientists and analyses published in the Journal of Democracy<\/em> describe how some European conservative parties foreground their \u201ctolerance\u201d toward gays to distance themselves from religious hardliners and the most reactionary currents.<\/a>\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Western Europe, several right\u2011wing and even radical right parties now deploy an ambivalent discourse: they claim to protect gays and women\u2026 against a designated enemy, often Muslims or migrants. This national \u201cpinkwashing\u201d presents itself as a defence of sexual minorities, but in practice it legitimises securitarian, xenophobic or Islamophobic policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA movement historically rooted in the left<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
LGBT electorates: still mostly left\u2011leaning, but less monolithic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
When the right discovers it can be \u201cgay\u2011friendly\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n