On top of all that America also just actively persecutes queer people. People will say “oh that’s just the republicans” as if that isn’t half the country and it’s not just the republicans, but a large group of democrats. Then they’ll say “oh, but we’re not as bad as [enemy of the week]” which funnily enough is actually a whatabouterismerino, but also not really a valid argument if you’re saying it’s okay to bomb a country if they’re mean to queer people. So it’s okay to be kinda mean to queer people?
On top of that there’s also the fact that some of the US’ closest allies are countries like Saudi Arabia, not to mention the many far right anti-lgbtq dictators the state has installed over the years.
On top of that the US has only recently gotten “good” on queer rights. Homosexuality wasn’t decriminalised in the whole of the US until 2003 (and we’re not talking some weird little forgotten law, it wasn’t until a supreme court decision forced several states to finally stop being bigoted.)
At the same time the GDR had decriminalised homosexuality by 1957 and with constitutional reform fully legal by 1968 
The GDR did this despite inheriting the nazis legal code (according to a wikipedia source which I will not fact check.)
Would it have been acceptable, nay morally right, for the GDR to bomb the US?
definitely, but not just because of da gays
Maybe I’m overemphasizing the issue, but I think developing a rhetorical solution to pink imperialism is one of the most important immaterial (as in “not industrial sabotage or something cool or actually useful”) goals for anti-imperialists currently.
I don’t fully know what makes the “x-ethnic group hates gays so let’s purge them from the land” so compelling. For me it just triggers an error log.
generalizing an entire population to be homophobic is straightforwardly bigoted in itself
If you bomb any large enough quantity of civilians, you are bound to kill many gay people in your allegedly pro-gay crusade
to my knowledge, there are no types of bombs that specifically spare the lives of gay people or their sympathizers, or any that specifically target homophobes
even gay people who survive direct bombings will suffer as everyone else does from destroyed infrastructure that they depended on
to the extent that things were already horrible for gay people in Gaza prior to October 2023, they were mostly a product of Gaza in general being horrible to live in because they were trapped in a giant concentration camp under israel’s thumb
israel itself is not even pro-gay enough to have legalized gay marriage, so it’s silly to talk them up like they’re crusading for gay rights when they can’t even be bothered with basic shit like that domestically
most of these dickheads invoking this talking point are straight and cisgendered, and would be fine watching every LGBT person in america being shoveled into a fucking furnace if they thought it was necessary to preserve their comfort (based on their reactions to the Dems showing complete disregard for Palestinians being brutalized and genocided, the concerns of arab and Muslim americans on Palestine, moving rightward on immigration, etc.)
Its just chauvinism. Back in the 1890s it was stopping slavery in the congo or saving indian widows.
For me I’ve had some succes with responding with “So you think it’s okay to kill them because they’re bigots?”
Sometimes they do a bit of handwringing, sometimes they don’t, but they end up arriving at the point that yes they think it’s fine that they die because they’re bigots, we need to make them more accepting of LGBTQ people.
“Alright then, we should kill all the bigots in this country. Let’s go murder all republicans. Let’s arm trans people. The death penalty is legal, so let’s just make it carte blanche.”
Then they’ll get mad and talk about false equivalencies, but you’ve basically got them at this point.
For me it’s that ‘x ethnic group are mostly bigots so they deserve to be genocide/ oppressed’ is that it is just good victim bad victim argument. That they only want to extend aid (or rather like the idea of extending aid) to ‘cute’ or ‘cuddly’ or ‘tragic’ victims but their solidarity will disappear (or rather their lack of solidarity will reveal itself) if you refuse to fit that mould. For example a trans person in the imperial core who refuses to allow their identity to be used to spread colonial propaganda even when they are short of funds. Or a gay indigenous person who wants to attack their colonisers.
I’m neither Igbo nor a women but seeing this pink and purplewashing makes me appreciate Things Fall Apart did not shy away from showing Igbo misogyny/ more conservative elements. I can’t say if it was good representation but I think it was important they showed it since it does help push across the idea that native misogyny etc. is not an excuse for ‘civilising’ their society.
On Okonkwo’s fundamentalism, yes it is bad. But he was also one of the only few people at the start who wanted to force the colonisers out of their land first. It can be read as a statement on how societies under attack end up with very reactionary and rigid rulers in response because they are the only ones that do something so even if you hate their actions you realise that criticising them and only them is a very chauvinistic way of analysing the situation. Kind of like how people only criticise the homophobia but not actions done by imperial countries that make them see LGBT rights as not just immoral but a security threat like ‘blackmailing their local queers into becoming informants’ or ‘painting rainbow flags on the bombs they drop onto the country’.