There’s a popular meme among right-wing people that basically says that liberals and LGBTQ people are both idiots for supporting Muslims in any way because Muslims hate and oppress LGBTQ people. This meme has been especially popular lately due to the conflict going on in Israel/Palestine, and part of this iteration of the meme is the idea that if you were LGBTQ and living in Gaza, you would be actively oppressed or perhaps murdered by the locals, and therefore, supporting Gaza is silly or stupid.
The first issue of note regarding this meme (and implied narrative) is that the right-wing people spreading this meme would like to commit genocide against both Muslims and LGBTQ people. It’s the equivalent of a schoolyard bully telling two of his victims, “Hey! You should fight each other!” with the major difference being that the schoolyard bully doesn’t always intend for their victims to die.
It would be fair to stop right there. If fascists want you to fight each other, it should be self-evident that you should choose the path of solidarity instead. However, there are lot of interesting details here.
Does Israel support LGBTQ people? Israel is supposedly the most developed place in the middle east in terms of LGBTQ rights, but gay marriage isn’t legal there and only 36% of Israelis support gay marriage according to a Pew research poll conducted this year. In contrast, Palestine still has the British Mandate Criminal Code Ordinance 1936 which criminalizes sex between men, but does not seem to really enforce it. An exception is that in 2017, they considered prosecuting an author for including homosexual themes in his writing, but then they didn’t go through with it. I’m having trouble getting very excited about the differences between Palestine and Israel on this issue.
There are other times when liberals and leftists have supported a group of people that didn’t really support them back, and Ukraine comes to mind specifically. Ukraine is lousy with Nazis, particularly in their military, yet liberals and leftist both support Ukraine’s independence. Maybe that’s partially because (as is the case with Palestine/Israel), Ukraine is being actively invaded by another country (Russia). Perhaps it is also because the Russians have failed to make the case that they are significantly less evil than the Ukrainians. Among liberals, specifically, there’s also the fact that liberals want Ukraine on their team; leftists would rather Ukraine remained independent.
Here’s the thing, though: Good people have solidarity for others even if those others are not on their side. Good people are opposed to genocide and settler-colonialism regardless of who is doing it. While liberals are frequently disappointing, they are still consistently better people than conservatives, and it is no surprise that many of them want an end to the genocide happening in Gaza.
To get back to the initial meme — this idea that LGBTQ people are stupid for having solidarity with Gaza — it usually isn’t necessary to choose between solidarity and strategic thinking because solidarity is usually the better strategy! If things ever settled down over there and we all had a chance to talk about things like women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and whatever else might be an issue, we would do that. Right now, the ongoing extermination of an entire people is the bigger issue.
Update: I just want to clarify that I don’t know exactly what kind of people in the US are demanding a cease fire in Gaza, and I don’t know exactly what kind of people are supporting the complete destruction of Palestine. Democrats (in general) are clearly split on the issue.