LGBT Rights:

Abstract

IN HER PHD thesis, The Right Kind of Queer: Race, Sexuality, and Gender in Contemporary Constructions of Swedishness (2020), Katharina Kehl interrogates the role of LGBT rights in contemporary imaginaries of Swedish national identity. Prompted by the appearance of LGBT people in Swedish military recruitment campaigns and in right-wing Swedish nationalist narratives, Kehl asks, "What is happening when political actors and institutions best known for their affinity to national flagwaving […] suddenly start to raise the multicoloured flag that has come to symbolise the fight for recognition of LGBT rights?" (2).This question provides the starting point for a thoughtful exploration of LGBT rights, gender exceptionalism and homonationalism in Sweden. Kehl demonstrates how gay rights function to demarcate who is included/excluded in understandings of Swedishness. In short, one must be the "right kind" of LGBT person, which Kehl argues requires being queer in ways that are acceptable and also intelligible to society -something that is particularly challenging for LGBT people who are "racialised as non-white and/or Muslim" (a phrase used throughout to denote specific identity constructions), due to assumptions that one's