Abstract/Summary

In eleven countries, same-sex sexual intimacy is punishable by death. Applying a legal pluralistic framework, we argue that ‘State-enabled killing’ of same-sex attracted people occurs in at least 23 countries. State-enabled killings range from extrajudicial and quasi-judicial killings, where State actors carry out the killing; through instances where the State retrospectively authorises, through bias or lawful excuses to homicide, the killing of same-sex attracted people by private actors; to cases where the State permits or endorses forms of so-called ‘conversion therapy’ that lead to death. We contend that a narrow focus on the death penalty as the only genuine form of State-enabled killing of same-sex attracted people is analytically unwarranted and strategically dubious in terms of law reform advocacy. Critical legal pluralism allows us to pursue the practical and normative implications of hypothesising a functional equivalence between the death penalty and these other forms of State-enabled killing.