But it doesn't seem that easy to me. In the US it required COINTELPRO to effectively destroy any sort of mass queer movement, right? And certainly many imperial core queers do buy into the individualist anticommunism of it, but that's primarily because it "benefits them" seeing as they're part of the imperial core. Probably easier to swallow the (obvious) lie that NATO nations care at all about the rights of queers, and that 'THIRD WORLD COUNTRY BAD' if the state telling you this also implicitly promises to uphold imperialism/white supremacy for you. Now that's a benefit for the average white queer in the US!

And naturally due to this, it's at least understandable nations in the imperial periphery are wary, especially of interference from NGOs. But in the same way that capitalists often need the working class to act against their own interests, it took a lot of setup to get queer people to be active participants in imperialism. Which does not mean that there's any sliver of merit in regarding queer issues as bourgeois, or even that it's fair to say they're "very easy to co-opt for the bourgeois". Also, since queer issues encompass a lot more than just sexuality, and sex is by no stretch "the very base of the needs pyramid" I don't really rate that quote.

Apologies if I'm reiterating things others have already said in this thread.