Disrupting Transnational Anti-LGBTQ Politics: Building the Theory of Liquid Conservatism for An Equitable Global Society

• In Event: Transnational Sexualities (Co-sponsored by Global and Transnational Sociology Section)

Abstract

Facing the rise of global anti-LGBTQ politics against gender/sexual minorities, what can sociologists do to put sociological theories to work for a more equitable global society for all genders and sexualities? In this research, deriving from my forthcoming book Fear of Queer Taiwan: Anti-LGBTQ Movements between Taiwan and the U.S. Religious Right (NYU Press 2026), I address the global expansion of anti-LGBTQ conservatism in Asia and explain why understanding it matters to U.S. and global citizens regarding moral politics, justice, health, culture, gender, sexuality, and social change. I discuss the rise of anti-LGBTQ movements in Taiwan as an extended case method to examine conditions of societal macrofoundations, institutional causes, and the democracy–prosperity–nonfundamentalism model, analyzing their influences on LGBTQ-related attitudes and policies. This discussion leads us to explore the gaps in anti-LGBTQ studies by considering races, ideologies, discourses, sexualities, international politics, and transnational connectivity. To fill the gap, I conducted mixed research methods, including a 23-month ethnography, 106 in-depth interviews, and more than 200 Christian books collected during fieldwork between 2015 and 2020. My findings indicate that we, sociologists, should disrupt the thinking tendency that rigidly frames moral conservatism as permanently traditional, premodern, and backward. Rather, we should examine it as fluidly and transnationally as we understand transnational queer/trans sexualities to better understand its complexity and mobility. Thus, this research utilizes Zygmunt Bauman’s concepts of liquid modernity and liquid sociology to build my theory of liquid conservatism. I argue that reconsidering moral conservatism through seven dimensions of liquidity—the transnational/geopolitical, sexual, temporal, institutional, ideological, racial, and spiritual liquidity—helps better understand anti-LGBTQ politics and its mobility, heterogeneity, changeability, and transformability. This move urges scholars and activists to reconsider the conventional notions attached to conservatism (Christian nationalism, traditionalism, evangelicalism, the left-right spectrum, and the pro- and anti- dichotomy) and better understand them through a new light of ideological liquidity, flexibility, and contingency. Only after understanding the multi-dimensional liquidity of global anti-LGBTQ politics can people work together for reimagining a more equitable global society for people of all genders and sexualities.

Author

• Ying-Chao Kao, Virginia Commonwealth University