A traditionalist coalition comprising autocratic states like Russia alongside the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which groups 57 mainly Muslim lands, has been rallying its forces against LGBT rights, The Economist notes:
It’s striking that Vladimir Putin’s Russia, while taking a strident stance against Islam-inspired terror, has been eager to team up with Islamic governments in resisting the global movement for LGBT rights and same-sex marriage. Moscow’s foreign-policy rhetoric has raised the standard of “traditional” values and cultures which have a common interest in resisting the liberal tide. As is pointed out by Lucian Leustean, a scholar of geopolitics and religion at Britain’s Aston University, Russia’s new national-security strategy makes prominent mention of “spiritual security”, in other words the idea that Russia’s moral and metaphysical values are under global threat. This converges, at least in part, with the concept of “faith security” which has been used by the Egyptian government to justify strict government oversight of religion, clamping down on atheism and “blasphemy” as well as ultra-pious extremism.
The campaign against liberal-democratic norms is characteristic of the global authoritarian offensive highlighted in Authoritarianism Goes Global, a new book published by the National Endowment for Democracy’s Journal of Democracy.
