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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. An earlier version of chapter 1 appeared as ‘‘Mapping U.S. Homonormativities,’’ in Gender, Place, and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 13, no. 1 (2006): 67–88. An earlier version of chapter 2 appeared as ‘‘Abu Ghraib: Arguing against Exceptionalism,’’ in Feminist Studies 30, no. 2 (2004): 522–34. for sandeep singh puar may 8, 1970–february 20, 2003 contents preface: tactics, strategies, logistics ix introduction: homonationalism and biopolitics 1 1. the sexuality of terrorism 37 2. abu ghraib and u.s. sexual exceptionalism 79 3. intimate control, infinite detention: rereading the lawrence case 114 4. ‘‘the turban is not a hat’’: queer diaspora and practices of profiling 166 conclusion: queer times, terrorist assemblages 203 acknowledgments 223 notes 229 references 287 index 325 If we think of tactics as the art of assembling men and weapons in order to win battles, and of strategy as the art of assembling battles in order to win wars, then logistics could be defined as the art of as- sembling war and the agricultural, economic, and industrial resources that make it possible. If a war machine could be said to have a body, then tactics would represent the muscles and strategy the brain, while logistics would be the machine’s digestive and circulatory systems: the procurement and supply networks that distribute resources throughout an army’s body.—Manuel De Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines Do not build on the good old days, but on the bad new ones.—Walter Benjamin, Reflections What do lives of privilege look like in the midst of war and the inevi- table violence that accompanies the building of empire?—M. Jacqui Alexander, Pedagogies of Crossing preface: tactics, strategies, logistics July 19, 2006, was declared the International Day of Action against Hompho- bic Persecution in Iran by two lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (lgbtiq) organizations, the self-proclaimed militant British- based OutRage!, and the Paris-based group idaho (an acronym for Interna- tional Day against Homophobia). Marking the one-year anniversary of the public hangings in the city of Mashad of two male Iranian youths, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, the two groups initiated a call for global protests that resulted in actions in dozens of cities across the United States, Canada, and Europe. Demonstrations in San Francisco, New York, London, Amster- dam, Moscow, Dublin, and Stockholm were joined by less predictable lo- cales, such as Salt Lake City, Sioux Falls, Tulsa, Warsaw, Marseille, Mexico City, and Bogotá.∞ The call was also endorsed by numerous organizations, including the International Lesbian and Gay Association and the Dutch gay organization, Center for Culture and Leisure; scores of lgbtiq activists, artists, academics, politicians, and celebrities (for example, the writer- activist Larry Kramer, the founder of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies and CUNY professor Martin Duberman, and New York State Senator Tom Duane); the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization, a gay Iranian group with European and Canadian secretariats; the website Gay Egypt; and the editors of maha, a ‘‘clandestine gay zine in Iran,’’ who wrote that ‘‘international lgbt pressure on the Iranian authorities, in solidarity with Iranian lgbt people, is most vital and welcome.’’≤ The French activist and founder of idaho Louis-George Tin hailed the executions as the genesis of an interna- tional gay solidarity movement, regarding the International Day of Action as ‘‘something special [that] has happened since 19 July 2005.’’≥ There was, however, plenty of discord among lgbtiq organizations re- garding the call for international protests. The culmination of a year-long argument regarding the facts of the execution, these disputes involved Peter Tatchell’s OutRage!; the director of the International Gay and Lesbian Hu- man Rights Commission (iglhrc) Paula Ettelbrick; Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Project of Human Rights Watch (hrw); the Gay City News writer Doug Ireland; Al-Fatiha’s founder, Faisal Alam; and the usual suspects among gay commentators, such as Andrew Sullivan.∂ In the wake of the London bombings, photos of the hangings circulating on the Internet drew international outrage. A posting about and three photos of the execution were initially released on the website of the Iranian Students’ News Agency. A translation of this article in an OutRage! press release qualified the hangings as ‘‘honor killings’’ of gay youth, and the story spread rapidly across lgbtiq listservs, websites, and blogs. The scholar and lgbtiq activist Richard Kim, however, in a meticulously detailed chronology of the events, writes in The Nation that it quickly became unclear whether the two had had consensual sex (with each other or others) and were the victims of antigay persecution, or if the teenagers were convicted of gang raping a 13-year-old boy.∑ On July 22, 2005, the Human Rights Campaign, the largest lesbian and gay organization in the United States, issued a statement demanding that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice condemn the killings. Sweden and the Netherlands tem- porarily suspended deportations of gay Iranians and OutRage! called for the EU to institute trade sanctions against Iran at a time, Kim notes, ‘‘when x preface the EU was engaged in delicate negotiations with Iran over its nuclear capacity.’’∏ By July 23, according to Kim, both iglhrc and hrw were con- cerned that ‘‘gay rights’’ were being co-opted at the expense of a broader social justice issue: execution of minors. Whether the complex case at hand is one of ‘‘juvenile execution,’’ the persecution of gays, or both, many commentators note that the United States continues to resist a growing consensus that capital punishment is inhumane, having only just recently outlawed executions of those under 18 in March 2005. As Faisal Alam notes, that three Nigerian ‘‘homosexual’’ men were sentenced to be stoned to death earlier that summer elicited no such global indignation.π Nor have these abuses elicited so much response from lgbtiq groups in the past. Along these lines, there were no protests in May 2004 when the circulation of photos of the torture practices at Abu Ghraib exhumed the revolting homophobia of the U.S. military. As iglhrc’s direc- tor Paula Ettelbrick asks, ‘‘Why now? Why just Iran?’’∫ Hailed as a member of the ‘‘axis of evil’’ by the Bush administration, and with evidence of planned U.S. military action mounting during the summer of 2005, it seems pretty clear why now, and why Iran. Further, the 2006 anniversary protests took place during the second month of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, amid escalating pressure to consider military strikes against Syria and Iran for their support of Hezbollah.