Digital rights of LGBTI communities

This chapter aims to move beyond the existing narratives on digital technologies and LGBTI rights by sketching a preliminary roadmap for the development of a combined LGBTI and digital rights analytical framework and research programme. Such a framework is necessary for two reasons. First, it is vital to address the growing complexity of the implications of the Internet and digital technology for human rights that in reality go well beyond the so-called classical digital rights issues of censorship and surveillance, which have captured and even expropriated scholarly and activist attention at the expense of other pressing issues. Second, such a framework is instrumental for the LGBTI movement to expand its political spectrum beyond ‘traditional’ issues, such as marriage equality and gender identity, and confront other pressing civil rights concerns to assure the effective and full equality of LGBTI communities in the digital age. The modest goal of this chapter is to illuminate the problematic issues at the intersection of LGBTI communities and digital technologies and hopefully stimulate a research programme on these topics.