Changing families and communities: an LGBT contribution to an alternative development path

Until now, most discussions on the place of LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) people in global civil society have focused on their access to citizenship, rather than their socioeconomic rights and role in development processes. This article argues that an alternative vision of development should challenge heteronormative family structures; build alternative, queer communities; wage activist, sexually emancipatory campaigns on concrete social issues (as the Treatment Action Campaign has done on HIV and AIDS in South Africa); and rethink existing models of democratic participation. It emphasises the paradoxes of LGBT organising in the context of neo-liberalism and globalisation, with an eye toward queering, or challenging heteronormativity in, global social justice movements.