The Militarization of Queer Sexuality: Is Sexuality an Assemblage of National Security Regimes?

Image Source: Stanford University Digital Stacks; https://tinyurl.com/bdfx6f5j

By Christopher Belden

The mainstream conception of national security renders gender identity and sexual orientation as irrelevant; however, states imbed sexuality as part of their national security agendas creating a circular assemblage through the dichotomous informant-security threat identity mapped upon queer bodies.

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In the existing analyses of Cold War national security policy, scholars often fixate on nuclear proliferation and militarization, all while excluding the role of queer sexuality in national security regimes. The United States and the Soviet Union (including its “satellite nations”) incorporated queer sexuality in their national security policy during the Cold War. Both superpowers viewed queer persons as a threat to national security and as an asset for the state’s surveillance of queer spaces. Drawing upon critical security studies, this paper intends to demonstrate how and why queer sexuality became embedded in national security agendas and its relevance today. In doing so, this paper’s analysis is further situated in the theories of differentiation, biopolitics, and assemblage. This paper argues that queer sexuality is an assemblage in national security regimes which establishes biopower for the state. By tethering sexuality to national security, queer sexuality is militarized and constructs queer individuals as national security threats, all while simultaneously being seen as potential intelligence assets. This paper uses the United States and East Germany during the Cold War as case studies to demonstrate that sexuality as an assemblage to national security was not unique to one political ideology but utilized by governments across the spectrum. This paper concludes that sexuality as an assemblage did not end with the Cold War but continues to this day as demonstrated with Israeli pinkwashing.

Sexuality and the State: Differentiation, Biopower and the Theory of Assemblage  

Traditional theories in security studies overemphasize the physicality and militarization of security. These theories equate national security to the protection of a state’s sovereignty, territory, and identity from the foreigner.[1] However, in alignment with critical security studies, this paper views security as a “derivative concept,” meaning that one’s sense of security is uniquely influenced by one’s own understanding of the world and the institutions that govern their lives.[2] More succinctly, critical security studies view the concept of security as context-dependent based on one’s positionality. Therefore, a threat perceived by one citizen from a state may not be perceived as a threat from another person of that same state due to the different perspectives and experiences they see the world through.[3] With this in mind, this paper adopts a critical security studies framework because, through its applied analysis of Sander Gilman’s theory of differentiation and Michel Foucault’s theory of biopower, it demonstrates that the perceived national security threat is socially constructed through the underlying factor of stigmatization. Furthermore, as demonstrated with Manuel DeLanda’s theory of assemblage, this threat can be decoded and recoded to no longer be a threat but an intelligence asset.[4] Therefore, the threat-asset identity is dependent on its operational use within a national security apparatus. To further clarify the critical security studies framework, Gilman, Foucault, and DeLanda’s theories further provide an in-depth analysis regarding how a threat, such as queer sexuality, acts as a derivative concept.

Gilman, in Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness, theorizes that the state’s regulation of queer sexuality intentionally renders it as “Other” to project and displace its anxieties and insecurities upon the LGBTQ+ community. In doing so, the state aims to preserve its artificial national identity and the imaginary from which its perceived legitimacy is derived. Queer sexuality then becomes a threat to the state since, “deviation, either in the nature of the sexual act or in its perceived purpose, becomes ‘disease,’ or its theological equivalent, ‘sin’.” Thus, “sexual norms become modes of control.”[5] Within social order, queer sexuality is stigmatized as “deviant”, which initiates the construction of queer sexuality as a national security threat. Queer persons are then portrayed as lacking morality and loyalty since they are not grounded to the state through the nuclear family.[6] Therefore, queer sexuality becomes a national security threat by challenging the heteronormative institutions that compose a state’s identity.

With the construction of queer persons as the ‘Other’, the state utilized sexual norms and regulation as a mechanism of biopower[7] to mitigate the threat of queer sexuality. Foucault, in The History of Sexuality, discusses how the act of sex was constructed as desirable in which individuals express their pleasure; however, governments began regulating the expression of one’s sexuality to establish biopower as another layer of control over the populace.[8] As a result, one’s body and sexuality are put under the purview of the government, which enacts “continuous regulatory and corrective measures” through norms to classify their subjects “in the domain of value and utility” to the state.[9] Through the distribution of value and utility, the state rewards those who further their agenda and ‘Others’ those who do not conform to it. In other words, Foucault argues that sexuality is one of the components in power relations “endowed with the greatest instrumentality.”[10] Sexuality as a tool then becomes “useful for the greatest number of maneuvers and [is] capable of serving as a point of support, as a linchpin, for the most varied strategies.”[11] Therefore, as this paper demonstrates, states embed sexuality and biopower into their national security apparatus not only to portray it as a threat, but to exploit it as a mechanism to further their national security agenda.

Through the incorporation of sexuality in a state’s national security regime, the perceived threat of queer sexuality is reinforced by the state’s recruitment of queer individuals, ultimately creating a circular state assemblage. Manuel DeLanda defined an assemblage as “a multiplicity which is made up of many heterogeneous terms and which establishes liaisons [and] relations between them.”[12] He notes that an “assemblage’s only unity is that of a co-functioning” or, in simpler terms, the assemblage exists as a result of the interaction between the components.[13] More concretely, within the theory of assemblage, there are three components at play: the condition of the assemblage, its concrete elements, and the personae.[14] The condition of the assemblage is the system in which the relationality between the concrete elements interacts.[15] The concrete elements are “the existing embodiment of the assemblage” and the core actors involved in the system which interact with one another.[16] The personae is the linking mechanism between the concrete elements within the system of assemblage.[17]

For the duration of this paper, the condition of the assemblage is a state’s system of national security in which one’s sexuality, visibility in society, the state’s agenda and self-proscribed identity are the concrete elements that interact. The personae linking these elements together and putting them in relation to one another includes the role of intelligence or law enforcement agencies and the role of legislation or Executive Orders constructing a state’s identity. Since the personae are not fixed and can be recoded to satisfy the operational need of the state’s will, a circular state assemblage emerges. As this paper will demonstrate, a state first declares queer sexuality as a national security threat through the implementation of social regulation. For effective enforcement and surveillance, the state then needs to recruit informants from the LGBTQ+ community and recode queer persons as intelligence assets. However, in doing so, the queer informants expose the prevalence of queer sexuality, which stokes the state’s fear and ultimately perpetuates the cycle of queer sexuality as a perceived national security threat.  Therefore, according to the theory of assemblage, queer individuals simultaneously absorb the dichotomous functionality of an informant and a security threat.

Scholars of queer surveillance typically view sexuality and national security through a Foucauldian theoretical framework, utilizing Foucault’s theory of biopower, to explain sexuality’s role in national security. However, more recent scholarship has loosened Foucault’s influence. Scholars, such as Samuel Clowes Huneke, have persuasively argued that the Foucauldian framework only explains the regulatory narrative and fails to bring to the forefront the various other ways the state uses sexuality— particularly for intelligence purposes through informant recruitment. Huneke, in “The Surveillance of Subcultures: Gay Spies, Everyday Life, and Cold War Intelligence in Divided Berlin,” argued that “surveillance could play a permissive, rather than a disciplinary, role in queer lives.”[18] Huneke also highlighted “how the paranoias of the security state could reinforce themselves through the surveillance of subcultures.”[19] This paper expands off of Huneke’s scholarship by explicitly situating its analysis in assemblage theory in tandem with Foucault’s theory of biopower to provide a holistic analysis of the role of queer sexuality in national security.

Pawns of the Communists: The Lavender Scare and U.S. National Security

Following the Second World War, the United States entered a Second Red Scare resulting in the conflation of communism and queer sexuality. This conflation ultimately embedded sexuality as an assemblage into the United States’ Cold War national security regime. On February 9^th, 1950, Senator McCarthy gave a scathing speech in Wheeling, West Virginia claiming to have a list of 205 communists in the State Department. On that list, Case 14 and Case 62 were queer individuals.[20] McCarthy ultimately failed to provide any substantial evidence of communist infiltration, which led Congress to pivot their focus from communist infiltrators to queer employees in the civil service: as witnessed with the Wherry-Hill and Hoey Committee investigations.[21]

The historical pathologization of queer individuals during the first half of the twentieth century made them an easy scapegoat for the paranoia of the Cold War and transformed queer sexuality from a social crime into a national security threat.[22] With this in mind, political figures like Guy Gabrielson, the National Chairman of the Republican Party, proclaimed, “Homosexuals were at least ‘as dangerous as the actual communists.’”[23] Gabrielson coded queer sexuality as “un-American,” constructing it as a “psychological maladjustment that led some people toward communism.”[24]Through his conflation of queer sexuality with communism, Gabrielson invoked biopower as a mechanism of control over queer bodies to depict them as a threat to U.S. national security. Therefore, one’s nonconformity to the heteronormative national imaginary made them an enemy to the state.

Homosexuals were further militarized through the conflation of homosexuality and communism in the Wherry-Hill and Hoey Committee investigations. From March 1950 to May of that year, Senator Kenneth Wherry and Senator J. Lister Hill opened an investigation to ensure that the 91 queer individuals purged from the State Department in 1947 were not reemployed by another government entity.[25] Senator Wherry described the urgency of purging queer employees, arguing: 

Wherever they [homosexuals] may be employed in a department handling defense secrets…moral perverts are a security risk, because of their proximity to persons having security secrets and documents containing such information…[the] blackmailing of [a] moral pervert [sic] is a long-established weapon among nations plotting aggression.[26]

Senator Wherry believed queer individuals were disqualified from federal employment because they were a liability of the state, since enemies of the United States could potentially coerce them into becoming espionage agents. Senator Wherry particularly identified the Soviet Union as instigating espionage recruitment, stating, “Only the most naïve could believe that the Communists’ fifth column in the United States would neglect to propagate and use homosexuals to gain their treacherous ends.”[27] The Wherry-Hill investigation’s designation of queer individuals as “security risks” began the militarization of queer identity during the Cold War and was further perpetuated during the Hoey Committee investigation.[28]

 With the publication of the Hoey Committee report, Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government, the espionage narrative exponentially grew in magnitude. From January 1, 1947, to October 31, 1950, approximately 4,380 military personnel and 420 civil service employees were purged from their positions for “sex perversion.”[29] The report insinuated that the suspicion of one queer individual was one too many, arguing that “one homosexual can pollute a government office.”[30] The government fervently believed the Soviet Union had “a program seeking out [the] weaknesses of leaders in [the United States] government and industry,” and that the FBI had “information of unquestionable reliability that orders have been issued by high Russian intelligence officials …to secure details of the private lives of government officials.”[31] The depiction of queer sexuality as a state-run covert campaign to penetrate the United States’ national security solidified the perception of queer individuals as unloyal traitors willing to sabotage the United States. As a result, sexuality was made an integral element in the United States’ national security policy. However, both committees failed to acknowledge that the perceived threat originated in their own stigmatization of queer sexuality and its institutionalization.

Propagating the militarization of queer identity as a communist agent, the Eisenhower administration issued Executive Order 10450 as a line of defense on April 27, 1953. Under Section 8, the Executive Order institutionalized queer sexuality as a national security threat. Executive Order 10450 went on to equate queer sexuality to “criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral [and] notoriously disgraceful conduct.”[32] As a result, queer individuals over the next two decades were banned from government service due to their perceived “threat.”[33] The integration of sexuality as a litmus test for the United States government reflects the Eisenhower administration’s incorporation of biopower into its national security framework. The depiction of queer individuals as conspiring with the enemy exhibits the linkage of sexuality as an assemblage in the United States’ national security apparatus. The government perceived queer persons residing in the United States as pawns of the Soviets, who used them to transform individuals’ sexuality and queer spaces into a metaphysical battleground for another proxy war. In order to understand how sexuality acts as a circular assemblage, the remainder of this section will shift its focus to analyze how queer individuals played an active role in perpetuating the surveillance regime.

 The United States government embedded sexuality into its national security agenda because it productively coerced queer individuals into becoming informants for the state. As historian Douglas M. Charles notes in his book, The FBI’s Obscene File: J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau’s Crusade Against Smut, the FBI transitioned their focus from criminal investigations to national security threats in 1936.[34] Their systemic surveillance of queer subcultures coincidentally began one year later and metastasized into the “Sex Deviates” program in 1951.[35] The goal of the program was to “disseminate information about gay federal employees to ensure their termination.”[36] The FBI successfully recruited Homophile activists to become informants as part of the “Sex Deviates” program, as witnessed with the case of David Finn.

The cooperation between Homophile activists and the FBI ultimately shows how queer sexuality acted as an assemblage since it was viewed not only as a threat but also as an asset. In a March 1954 ONE magazine article, “Who Is This Man?,” Finn was exposed as an informant, reporting, “one delegate rose to assert that he had been closely associated with the F.B.I. for many years,” and that in his quest to relinquish any suspected communist sympathizers from Mattachine leadership he threatened to “report the activities of the [Mattachine] Convention to the police.”[37] Furthermore, an FBI Special Agent memo from June 1953 reported Finn expressed “he would be glad to cooperate with the FBI in the future.”[38] In other words, queer individuals were key assets necessary for the state to surveil the queer national security threat. Through a critical security lens, the United States government constructed queer sexuality as a national security threat through the institutionalization of its stigma by way of Executive Order 10450. To protect the United States’ heteronormative identity at a time of growing global uncertainty, the government emboldened itself through the deployment of biopower. In doing so, sexuality was embedded as an assemblage in U.S. national security.

Western Spies: Queer Individuals in the German Democratic Republic and the Stasi 

East Germany and the Soviet Union, like the United States, also embedded queer sexuality as a circular state assemblage through the dichotomous threat-asset identity. In a similar manner, East Germany’s secret police and intelligence agency, the Stasi, controlled the queer threat through surveillance of queer spaces, the persecution of political opponents, and the purge of their own ranks of suspected queer individuals. In 1951, nearly thirty-two bars in the Scheunenviertel neighborhood of Berlin were forced to close due to being stigmatized as “pederast and gay broad bars” depicted as “sketchy.”[39] One of these bars was the famous Mulackritze, which was known to be frequented by some of the most well-known queer public figures.[40] The Stasi targeted queer bars like Mulackritze because they were perceived as spaces where Western agents could corrupt and recruit East Germans as spies.[41] As historian Andrea Rottman explains, queer individuals were “long considered unreliable citizens because of their transnational networks,” which connected them “to the other side of the Iron Curtain.”[42] Therefore, by viewing queer spaces as vulnerable for Western infiltration, the Stasi exercised biopower to control the public deployment of its residents’ sexuality. 

The role of sexuality in the Eastern Bloc’s national security became even more evident with the Stasi and Soviet Union’s suppression of the 1953 uprising in East Germany. The 1953 uprising was a rebuke of both Sovietization and the incorporation of East Germany as a Soviet satellite state.[43] Historian Samuel Clowes Huneke attributes the uprising as a significant moment when sexuality became embedded in the Eastern Bloc’s security strategy. He claims it “mark[ed] a shift in language around homosexuality” and made “clear that homosexuality would have no public place under socialism.”[44] To convey this message, the Stasi persecuted East Germany’s Minister of Justice, Max Fechner, because he opposed the Soviet Union and the Stasi’s illegal arrests made during the uprising. This led to Fechner’s imprisonment for eight years under Paragraph 175, the notorious anti-homosexual penal code.[45] The Stasi politicized and scapegoated Fechner’s sexuality to continue the narrative that queer individuals could not be loyal comrades. Therefore, queer sexuality was juxtaposed to Sovietization and seen as contradictory to the state’s agenda.

 Viewing queerness as a threat to national security, Cold War anxieties forced the Stasi to look inward and purge their own ranks. In 1955, Ernst Wollweber, the Stasi Minister, ordered the purge of queer officers and echoed the rhetoric of the Hoey Committee report. He argued that “colleagues who are not unwavering in a moral sense” were unfit for service.[46] From the Stasi perspective, East Germany had to enact queer persecution as a defense mechanism to “localize [their] anxiety” and “prove to [themselves] that what [they] fear does not lie within.”[47] As a result, queer East Germans became militarized through the Stasi’s projection of their sexuality as an act of “Western decadence,” completing the construction of queer sexuality as a threat to the Eastern Bloc’s security.[48]

 All while constructing queer individuals as spies for the West, East Germany strategically utilized queer individuals as informants in their own national security regime. In October 1960, the Stasi recruited a gay actor in East Berlin, whose pseudonym was Franz Moor, solely because the Stasi believed, “his large circle of acquaintances, in particular among homosexuals and other negative persons,” put him “in a position to give [the Stasi] further leads” and could “lead to further recruitment.”[49] Through Moor’s surveillance work in Berlin’s gay subculture, the Stasi fervently came to believe that the West was “recruiting among homosexuals circles.”[50] During his investigation into the Nibelungen Ring, he reported that two women “maintain a circle of young men” and “turn these men into spies” whom they then “set up with homosexual persons” to “pump those individuals for information and learn their political views.”[51] Lesbians also were active informants for the Stasi and reported on the activities of other lesbians. An example of this is the work of Maria Jahn, who reported on the Friedrichstraße area, particularly the Mooka-Bar and G-Bier-Bar. Jahn flagged these bars for the Stasi as the “meeting spot for lesbian women.”[52] Through surveillance conducted by queer informants, queer sexuality became synonymous with acts of  Western aggression— or as Huneke states, an “avenue of infiltration.”[53]

As demonstrated above, queer sexuality in East Germany was also a circular state assemblage. Queer sexuality was simultaneously coded as Western infiltration and as a mechanism to acquire national security intelligence. Assemblage theory enhances our understanding of the role of sexuality in national security regimes because it shows how dichotomous stigmatizations of deployments of sexuality interact and create a cycle of othering, recruiting, and surveilling queer individuals. Through the analyses of both the United States (a democracy) and East Germany (an authoritarian dictatorship), it is evident that sexuality’s functioning as an assemblage to national security is not unique to one governing ideology: rather, it is used by governments across the ideological spectrum. This functioning still holds true to this day.

Is Sexuality Still Relevant Today in National Security?

 Sexuality as an assemblage of national security did not end at the close of the Cold War; rather, sexuality continues to function as an assemblage to this day— most notably within the Israel-Palestine conflict. On November 13, 2023, the Israeli government posted a photo of Yoav Atzmoni, an IDF soldier, proudly posing with a pride flag in front of smoldering Palestinian apartment buildings and claimed it was “the first ever pride flag raised in Gaza.”[54] Atzmoni’s photo is a classic example of Israeli pinkwashing and ultimately demonstrates Israel’s incorporation of sexuality as an assemblage into their national security regime.

Israeli pinkwashing draws upon orientalist tropes and directly embeds sexuality into Israel’s national security apparatus as a mechanism to portray Israel in a favorable light in the eyes of Western governments. The very essence of pinkwashing depicts Palestine and other Muslim-majority nations as “barbaric” and oppressors of the LQBTQ+ community, all while portraying Israel as “one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly places in the world.”[55] For instance, Emily Francis, a Jewish World Weekly news anchor, stated in a recent segment with participants from Taglit’s LGBTQ Birthright trip, “Israel is so progressive and so accepting…and you know this would not be the case if you’re in Gaza. They’re not exactly, you know, welcoming LGBTQ [persons] with open arms.”[56] Whether LGBTQ+ Israelis know it or not, their sexuality is being exploited by Israel as part of a public relations campaign to solely further Israel’s national security strategy. Israel’s interest in the LGBTQ+ community is not in good faith. It is a facade used to further Israel’s occupation of Palestine all while garnering Western support for it.

To be clear, this article does not excuse the trans/homophobia committed by some Palestinians.[57] Rather, it demonstrates that Israel intentionally exploits and instigates said trans/homophobia in Palestine for its own national security interests all while exacerbating the vulnerabilities queer Palestinians endure. As a result, Israel imposes a hyperbolized orientalist narrative upon Palestine, portraying it as uniquely trans/homophobic all while excusing their own role and responsibility for the violence committed against queer Palestinians. Therefore, Israel uses their pinkwashing campaign as a disguise for the human rights violations they commit during their ongoing occupation of Palestine.

Throughout Israel’s occupation of Palestine, Israel has depicted queer Palestinians as national security threats and intelligence assets. Anthropologist Sa’ed Atshan, in his book Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, noted that Israel’s incorporation of queer Palestinians into their national security framework is nothing new. Rather, for decades, Israeli intelligence agencies “targeted queer Palestinians and used homophobia as a weapon, threatening to reveal them to their families and communities if they do not serve as informants or collaborators.”[58] An example of these tactics includes the experience of twenty-year-old Adham, who was messaged by an Israeli intelligence officer on Grindr.[59] The officer blackmailed Adham by sending him photos of his family to pressure him into participating in Israel’s investigation of his cousins.[60] They demanded Adham to go to his cousins’ home to “question [his cousins’] parents and get as much information about [his cousins] as possible.”[61] Confirming the use of these tactics, a former IDF official, who served in Unit 8200, relayed that Israeli intelligence officers are “instructed to watch for Arabic words like ‘gay’ and ‘affair’ when monitoring communications of potential targets.”[62] Israel’s surveillance and exploitation of Palestine’s queer community is a clear display of biopower. Israel is exploiting the stigmatization attached to queer identity as a point of infiltration into Palestinian life. Therefore, Israel’s exploitation of queer Palestinians is embedded as an assemblage to the state’s national security apparatus to further its occupation of Palestine.

Israel not only exploits the stigmatization of queer sexuality to its benefit, but also reenforces said stigmatization through its securitization. In doing so, Israel embedded sexuality as an assemblage to Israel’s national security apparatus. The recruitment of queer individuals is well known in Palestinian society to the extent that Palestinians conflate homosexuality with espionage.[63] Therefore, queer Palestinians are rejected from Palestinian society on the basis of being national security threats and conflated with Israel’s occupation, and more recently, genocide[64]. As Atshan explains, Israel instigates Palestinian homophobia so that “the Israeli government [can] invoke Palestinian homophobia to further pinkwashing propaganda.”[65]  Therefore, the homophobia that fuels Israel’s blackmailing machine is deliberately incited to advance its national security agenda.

The circular state assemblage continues to be developed through Israel’s flat-out denial of queer Palestinians’ human rights and right to asylum. While Israel portrays Palestine as violently homophobic, it ignores the state’s own perpetuation of homophobic violence against the LGBTQ+ community and queer Palestinians. Perceiving queerness as a threat to the state, Israeli politician Nissim Ze’ev proclaimed that homosexuals are “as toxic as bird flu” and that they are “carrying out the self-destruction of Israeli society.”[66] Ze’ev’s remarks construct queer identity as a threat to Israeli national security by portraying it as a disease infecting Israeli identity. Further institutionalizing the securitization from queer sexuality, Prime Minister Netanyahu recently partnered with extremist anti-LGBTQ+ politicians to regain power in December 2022, including self-proclaimed “fascist homophobe” Bezalel Smotrich (Israel’s Finance Minister).[67] Israeli officials perceive queer sexuality as a threat because they believe it enforces the antisemitic effeminate depiction of Jews and tarnishes their image as a Jewish state on the global stage.[68] Therefore, while Israel’s pinkwashing agenda was deployed to garner support and legitimacy by appeasing Western government’s performative “interest” in human rights, Israel’s heteronormative state identity continues to pathologize queer sexuality and portrays it as a threat. 

  The generalized homophobia possessed by top Israeli leaders is exponentially magnified for queer Palestinians due to their intersecting identities of being both queer and Palestinian. In justifying the denial of asylum to queer Palestinians, Eli Yishai (Israel’s former Minister on Internal Affairs) insinuated that, “according to international law, being gay is not a reason for granting asylum.”[69] Furthermore, Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority has historically denied asylum claims filed by LGBTQ+ Palestinians on the sole basis that they are Palestinian and hence “are not subject to the UN’s Refugee Convention.”[70] The Tel Aviv Court for Administrative Affairs, however, in February 2024 ruled that LGBTQ+ Palestinians can in fact request asylum in Israel.[71] Former Israeli Minister of Interior, Moshe Arbel, voiced opposition to the ruling and announced his intention to appeal the decision.[72] Therefore, demonstrating that Israel’s concern for LGBTQ+ Palestinians ends at their utility for Israel’s national security agenda. The narrative of Israel’s pinkwashing propaganda depicting Palestinians as violently homophobic is conveniently forgotten by the Ministry of Interior.

Queer Palestinians become securitized as threats when they are attempting to apply for asylum in Israel due to the trans/homophobia they endure in Palestine which is exacerbated and instigated by Israel’s imperial project. Atshan reflects on this dichotomy, explaining Israel “recognizes Palestinians as victims only when the perpetrators are also Palestinian and when doing so is convenient for Israeli state narratives.”[73] These narratives intentionally incorporate queer sexuality into the state’s national security framework as a self-reinforcing apparatus designed to advance its occupation of Palestine and, more recently, the genocide[74] of the Palestinian people. Through their pinkwashing agenda, the blackmailing of queer Palestinians, and the denial of queer Palestinian asylum claims, Israel invokes biopower to code queer Palestinians as both a threat and an asset for Israeli national security. This case demonstrates that sexuality still acts as an assemblage in national security regimes today.

Conclusion

Queer sexuality as an assemblage to national security functions almost identically in the United States, East Germany, and the Israel-Palestine case studies. In each case study, a circular state assemblage materialized where the stigmatization of queer sexuality created a perceived national security threat, which then resulted in the state invoking biopower to surveil and control queer individuals. They incorporated queer individuals into national security regimes as both assets and threats, creating a self-perpetuating cycle in which each role reinforced the other. This analysis is crucial to understanding national security regimes. While the relationship between national security and race, ethnicity, and religion have been well documented, its relationship with sexuality has largely been overlooked and rendered insignificant. This paper concludes that sexuality has been and continues to be an assemblage in national security regimes. Sexuality will continue to be an assemblage to national security until the state: 1) relinquishes its control over human sexuality, 2) terminates its perpetuation of the stigmatization of queer individuals, and 3) decentralizes the role of heteronormativity in state identity. Until this is accomplished, the circular state assemblage will continue to infringe and exploit the human rights of the LGBTQ+ community on an international level.

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[1] Ken Booth, Critical Security Studies and World Politics (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005), 23. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781685857356.

[2] Booth, Critical Security Studies, 4 & 11.

[3] Booth, Critical Security Studies, 13.

[4] Thomas Nail, “What is an Assemblage?” SubStance 46, no. 1 (2017): 21-37, 37. https://doi.org/10.1353/sub.2017.0001.

[5] Sander Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Cornell University Press, 1985), 24.

[6] Gilman, Difference and Pathology, 23.

[7] According to Foucault, biopower is the disciplinary regulation of an individual’s life and death (and in this paper sexuality) as a mechanism of governance to control the populace and to sustain the longevity of the state.

[8] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume 1: An Introduction, translated by Robert Hurley (Vintage Books, 1990), 157.

[9] Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 144.

[10] Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 103.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Manuel Delanda, Assemblage Theory (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 1. 

[13] Delanda, Assemblage Theory, 1. 

[14] Nail, “What is an Assemblage?,” 24.

[15] Nail, “What is an Assemblage?,” 24.

[16] Nail, “What is an Assemblage?,” 26.

[17] Nail, “What is an Assemblage?,” 27.

[18] Samuel Clowes Huneke, “The Surveillance of Subcultures: Gay Spies, Everyday Life, and Cold War Intelligence in Divided Berlin,” Journal of Social History 56, no. 3 (2023): 559-582, 559. https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shac030.

[19] Huneke, “The Surveillance of Subcultures,” 559.

[20] Joseph McCarthy, “Wheeling Speech,” (February 9, 1950).

[21] Judith Adkins, “These People Are Frightened to Death,” National Archives 48, no. 2 (2016). https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/lavender.html.

[22] Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of gay Men and Women in World War II (The University of North Carolina Press, 1990) 258-259; and Douglas M. Charles, Hoover’s War on Gays: Exposing the FBI’s “Sex Deviates” Program (University Press of Kansas, 2015), 36.

[23] Charles, Hoover’s War on Gays, 83.

[24] Johnson, “America’s Cold War Empire,” 56.

[25] Adkins, “These People Are Frightened to Death.”

[26] Senator Kenneth Wherry as quoted in Charles, Hoover’s War on Gays, 86.

[27] Senator Kenneth Wherry as quoted in Adkins, “These People Are Frightened to Death.”

[28] Adkins, “These People Are Frightened to Death.”

[29] U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments Subcommittee on Investigations, Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government (81^st Cong., 2nd sess., 1950), 24-25. https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:fd720pb8753/employment-homosexuals-serialset.pdf.

[30] U.S. Congress, Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government, 4.

[31] U.S. Congress, Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government, 6.

[32] Executive Order no. 10450, Security Requirements for Government Employment, sec. 8 (April 27, 1953). https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/10450.html.

[33] Adkins, “These People Are Frightened to Death.”

[34] Douglas M. Charles, The FBI’s Obscene File: J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau’s Crusade against Smut (University Press of Kansas, 2012), 3.

[35] Charles, The FBI’s Obscene File, 3.

[36] Charles, The FBI’s Obscene File, 43 and 60.

[37] David Freeman, “Who Is This Man?” One: The Homosexual Magazine (March 1954); and Charles, Hoover’s War on Gays, 161.

[38] Charles, Hoover’s War on Gays, 164.

[39] Andrea Rottmann, Queer Lives Across the Wall: Desire and Danger in Divided Berlin, 1945-1970 (University of Toronto Press, 2023), 75 and 76. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/jj.2960283.

[40] Rottmann, Queer Lives Across the Wall, 75.

[41] Huneke, States of Liberation, 74 and 76.

[42] Rottmann, Queer Lives Across the Wall, 76.

[43] Bryne, Malcolm and Gregory F. Domber, “Uprising in East Germany, 1953,” The National Security Archive at George Washington University (June 15, 2001). https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB50/.

[44] Samuel Clowes Huneke, States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany (University of Toronto Press, 2022), 73.

[45] John O. Koehler, Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police, (Westview Press, 1999), 60; and Huneke, States of Liberation, 73.

[46] Huneke, States of Liberation, 78.

[47] Gilman, Difference and Pathology, 240. 

[48] Huneke, States of Liberation, 74.

[49] Huneke, States of Liberation, 108.

[50] Huneke, States of Liberation, 109.

[51] Huneke, States of Liberation,110; and Rottmann, Queer Lives Across the Wall, 95.

[52] Rottmann, Queer Lives Across the Wall, 96.

[53] Huneke, States of Liberation, 111.

[54] Lubna Masarwa, “Israel-Palestine War: Soldier flying rainbow flag in Gaza ‘textbook pinkwashing,’” Middle East Eye (November 13, 2023). https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-soldier-rainbow-flag-gaza-condemned-pinkwashing-textbook.

[55] Sa’ed Atshan, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique (Stanford University Press, 2020), 3; and Creative Community for Peace (@ccfpeace), “Tel Aviv is the ‘Gay Capital of the Middle East,’ and one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly places in the world,” Instagram, August 25, 2024. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_GeKR4Nc7k/.

[56] Jewish World Weekly (@i24NEWS English), “It feels like coming home” 150 LGBTQ+ people visit Israel on cultural exchange,” Video, 8:18, September 1, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PuQfKVgNyA.

[57] Diaa Hadid and Majdal Waheidi, “Hamas commander accused of gay sex is killed by his own,” The Irish Times, March 1, 2016. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/hamas-commander-accused-of-gay-sex-is-killed-by-his-own-1.2555822.; “Gay Palestinian Ahmad Abu Marhia beheaded in West Bank,” BBC News, October 7, 2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63174835.; “Palestine,” Human Dignity Trust, December 17, 2024. https://www.humandignitytrust.org/country-profile/palestine/.; and “LGBT Rights in Palestine,” Equaldex. https://www.equaldex.com/region/palestine.

[58] Atshan, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, 2.

[59] Theia Chatelle, “Palestinian Queers under Israeli surveillance— and threat,” Jewish Voice for Liberation (August 31, 2024). https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/palestinian-queers-under-israeli-surveillance-and-threat/.

[60] Ibid.

[61] Ibid.

[62] Ibid.

[63] Atshan, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, 5.

[64] “Statement on Why We Call the Israeli Attack on Gaza Genocide,” Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security (December 29, 2023). https://www.lemkininstitute.com/statements-new-page/statement-on-why-we-call-the-israeli-attack-on-gaza-genocide; and “Israel has committed genocide on the Gaza strip, UN Commission finds,” United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (September 16, 2025). https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds.

[65] Atshan, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, 102.

[66] Atshan, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, 84.

[67] Ron Kampeas, “Could the new government endanger Israel’s status as an LGBTQ haven?” The Times of Israel (January 18, 2023). https://www.timesofisrael.com/could-the-new-government-endanger-israels-status-as-an-lgbtq-haven/.

[68] Atshan, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, 9.

[69] Atshan, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, 166.

[70] “LGBTQ+ Palestinians can request asylum in Israel, court rules,” The Jerusalem Post, February 5, 2024. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-785171.

[71] Ibid.

[72] Ibid.

[73] Atshan, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, 102.

[74] Statement on Why We Call the Israeli Attack on Gaza Genocide,” Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention; and “Israel has committed genocide on the Gaza strip, UN Commission finds,” United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner.

Works Cited (Primary Sources)

Chatelle, Theia. “Palestinian Queers under Israeli surveillance— and threat.” Jewish Voice for Liberation. August 31, 2024. https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/palestinian-queers-under-israeli-surveillance-and-threat/.

Creative Community for Peace (@ccfpeace). “Tel Aviv is the ‘Gay Capital of the Middle East,’ and one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly places in the world.” Instagram. August 25, 2024. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_GeKR4Nc7k/.

Executive Order no. 10450. Security Requirements for Government Employment, sec. 8 (April 27, 1953). https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/10450.html.

Freeman, David. “Who Is This Man?” One: The Homosexual Magazine, March 1, 1954: 16-18. https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28041906.

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Masarwa, Lubna. “Israel-Palestine War: Soldier flying rainbow flag in Gaza ‘textbook pinkwashing.’” Middle East Eye (November 13, 2023). https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-soldier-rainbow-flag-gaza-condemned-pinkwashing-textbook.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR/S

Christopher Belden