in the last decade numerous development institutions in the Global North have undergone major organizational, legal and discursive shifts regarding the visibility and acknowledgment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer people as “target groups,” “recipients,” and “beneficiaries” of development programs and development aid
sexual and gender dissidents and queer activists from the Global South and East have likewise started to strategically engage with the “requirements” and “languages” of development institutions, most literally by seeking aid for the projects and initiatives (Lind ed.
Development agencies have also strengthened their political ties and relations with LGBTIQ organizations and movements in the Global South, East and North and are in this way contributing to the formation of a new development framework that declares the promotion of and adherence to LGBTIQ rights as a goal and indicator for development
This “special relationship” becomes particularly evident in the European enlargement process in Central and Eastern Europe, where “tolerance” toward LGBTIQs, and a protection of Pride marches in particular, was being established at least on a symbolic level as a defining component of becoming “European”
To connect homo- and transphobia with a backwardness has become a powerful, but at the same time profoundly contested tool of leverage and advocacy for LGBTIQ activ-ists and movements. But at the same time, LGBTIQ rights have been established as a defining component of a perceived European sexual exceptionalism
Europe is being imagined as a “space where sexual freedom can and does take place and as a subject able to grant such freedom to others”