Keep Them on the Margin: Evangelical Pushback against LGBTQ Human Rights Advocacy in South Korea, Focusing on Controversies over the 2007 Anti-Discrimination Bill

The paper seeks to make the argument that evangelical Christian community’s pushback against LGBT human rights is a key reason that LGBT people are relegated to the margin of South Korean society. It seeks to do so by focusing on evangelicals’ opposition to the introduction of the Anti-Discrimination Bill at the National Assembly in late 2007, a bill introduced by Roh Moo-hyun’s justice department, inspired by the LGBTQ rights advocacy of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. The paper analyzes the theological and other rationale evangelicals espoused as well as the social and political pressure they brought to bear on their pushback.