This article examines how LGBTQ individuals in Beirut articulate discourses of progress, modernity, and exceptionalism in light of the regional geopolitical situation. While transnational discourses portray Beirut as an open and cosmopolitan city in the Arab World, the study focuses on how LGBTQ individuals engage with and negotiate these discourses in their everyday lives. The author examines the gap between discourses of Beiruti openness and exceptionalism, and the realities of exclusion experienced by LGBTQ individuals in Beirut. Focusing on unequal access to space, the author asks, for whom is Beirut cosmopolitan and gay-friendly? Drawing on ethnographic observations and 20 life-history interviews with LGBTQ individuals in Beirut, the author finds that LGBTQ individuals in Beirut create relational understandings of modernity and cosmopolitanism that situate Beirut in relation to other Arab cities, rather than just Euro-American cities. In addition, gender normativity and class shape LGBTQ individuals’ access to several types of spaces. Finally, it is suggested that scholars must be attentive to celebratory discourses of exceptionalism and cosmopolitanism of places, and conceptualize them as relational and contextual designations which obscure inequalities that characterize those places.

In this article, I explore two contending claims in the literature on LGBTQ organizing in the Global South. Whereas some theorists argue that LGBTQ groups in the Global South uncritically apply ''Western'' understandings of sexuality in their LGBTQ organizing, others claim that a global LGBTQ identity and community truly exists, which despite taking on different forms, follows one similar ''developmental'' trajectory. Drawing on the cases of the two Lebanese LGBTQ social movement organizations (SMOs) Helem and Meem, I argue that the present literature homogenizes such organizations and does not account for the complexities, differences and diversities in their activism. By analyzing their respective websites, online publications and published online speeches from 2004 to 2011, I argue that Meem and Helem's different strategic choices and definitions of collective queer identities both simultaneously contest and engage with dominant models of Euro-American LGBTQ organizing. I illustrate that, despite their different organizing strategies, both Helem and Meem attempt to remain rooted in a local context by highlighting their multiple positions and intersectional struggles. In addition, I show that geopolitical context plays a central role in their collective identity deployment since the two groups highlight different aspects of themselves in relation to local and global audiences. Finally, I use this case to point out the limitations of the present literature and the need for research that operates with a more complex sense of LGBTQ groups in the Global South.

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In this article, we argue for "a queer sociology" that centers race and processes of racialization, while naming and decentering Whiteness. "A queer sociology" is a field that foregrounds relations of power, particularly: race, class, empire, gender and gender identity, and sexuality, and that does not use queer in a reductionist way (or merely in reference to LGBT identity-based projects). We question the uses of queer theory in sociology and show how previous iterations miss/ignore multiple genealogies of the field, like Black feminist thought, women of color feminisms, and the queer of color critique. "A queer sociology" centers power relations beyond gender and sexuality, recognizing the invisible and overarching work of Whiteness and the US (as unnamed centers of analyses) in structuring not only the sociology of sexualities, but sociological thinking overall. We invite sociology to engage with our theorization of "a queer sociology" as a way to transform our categories of analysis and how we conceive of power.

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