The explicit claim that homosexuality is somehow alien to Indonesian culture, however, may be at great odds with historical records. At a recent training session of Bela Negara, a new militia group sponsored by the Ministry of Defense to restore nationalism in ordinary Indonesians, Reuters reported that the instructor had exhorted the participants to guard against “evil foreign influences” such as communism, drugs and homosexuality. The LGBT community is now seen as a national threat by at least one government ministry. Predictably, for a nation that fancies itself religious, a great proportion of the public professes to disapprove of homosexuality.
And yet for the past few months, it has become one of the most debated topics in the country. The Hidden Histories of Homosexuality in Asia ĭespite the commonplace homophobia in Asian societies today, no nation can deny a presence of LGBT practices in its history.Ī few years ago, most Indonesians probably didn’t know what the acronym LGBT-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender-stood for.
