This publication is part of the inquiry The Against Nature Journal, initiated in 2014 as commission by the NGO Legal Agenda and arts organisation Ashkal Alwan in Beirut.

The Against Nature Journal is a biannual arts and human rights magazine exploring “crime against nature” laws and their legacies, in print, in person, and online. Authors and readers from law, activism, social sciences, and the arts are brought together to foster dialogue on sexual and reproductive rights and rethink nature anew.    

As of summer 2020, the “restoration of natural order” is back on the agenda of many alt-right movements across the world, and “unnatural” sexual orientations and behaviors are still condemned to imprisonment, corporal punishment, and even the death penalty in over seventy countries. 

The Against Nature Journal features internationally renowned writers, scholars, poets, journalists and activists from across the world, with a focus on countries where prosecution and criminalization of LGBTQI+ persons are still enforced as the result of colonial histories. Future issues will intertwine six themes, each becoming the major focus of one issue: Religion, Migration, Medicine, Love, Death, Nature.  

This inaugural 144 pages issue, launched 4 September 2020, outlines the intersections between legislation, human rights activism, and spirituality. 

In T.A.N.J #1 we celebrate the magical legacy of the late writer Binyavanga Wainaina, with his first piece of fiction, accompanied by an essay on his lifework by Amatesiro Dore. The issue also includes legal scholar Vivek Divan’s commentary on a seminal verdict in the history of “crime against nature” laws from India, essays on non-normative approaches to spirituality and religion by Martti Nissinen and Linn Marie Tonstad, poetry by Abu Nuwas and Chekwube Danladi, an inspiring text on the moral authority of “nature” by science historian Lorraine Daston, images from the colonial period in Vietnam by artist Danh Vo, and columns on recent events in Barbados, Brazil and Abya Yala, India, Kenya, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, and Poland.

500 copies are distributed in selected bookshops worldwide. 1,500 free copies are distributed internationally to individuals and organizations who are concerned with the laws of “crime against nature” and operate in the fields of law, activism, social sciences, and the arts.

Help maintain the publishing, education, and community activities of The Against Nature Journal by joining our membership program (€45) available on our website.

For more information on how to support the project please write to Grégory: gregory(at)theagainstnaturejournal.com

If you would like to contribute or send us a letter, please write to the editors:
editors(at)theagainstnaturejournal.com