Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has officially designated the spread of LGBTQ culture as a threat to national defense, placing it in the same regulatory category as terrorism, separatism, and cyberattacks. This is not a metaphor. It is a signed presidential regulation with a number and everything. Presidential Regulation No. 111 of 2025, to be exact.
What the Regulation Actually Says
Tempo English reports that Prabowo signed Presidential Regulation No. 111 of 2025 on October 24, 2025, covering Indonesia's General Policy for National Defense for the 2025-2029 period. Buried in the appendix under "Threat Analysis" is a list of what the Indonesian government now officially considers non-military threats to the state.
The regulation defines non-military threats as "unarmed efforts or activities that endanger and threaten the state's sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the safety of the entire nation." The list includes forbidden ideologies, the erosion of nationalism, atheism, separatism, terrorism, radicalism, information warfare, economic crises, online gambling, illegal drug trafficking, cyberattacks, natural disasters, and disease outbreaks.
And then, right there in the official text: "the dissemination of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) culture." Signed, sealed, and published by the sitting head of state of the world's fourth most populous country.
The Company This Regulation Keeps
Let's sit with the list for a second. Indonesia's government has formally decided that LGBTQ culture belongs in the same threat category as nuclear and biological attacks on installations, piracy, natural resource theft, and global warming. Not as a social policy debate. Not as a religious community concern handled through civil discourse. As a defense threat. A thing the military apparatus of the state must guard against.
The regulation also puts LGBTQ cultural spread alongside illegal online loans and online gambling, which is either a remarkable statement about how dangerous Prabowo thinks queer visibility is, or a remarkable statement about how seriously he takes online gambling. Possibly both.
The regulation was drafted as the implementing regulation for Article 13 of Law No. 3 of 2002 on state defense, and it functions as a binding guide for the "planning, implementation, and supervision" of Indonesia's national defense system. This is not a think-piece. It is operational policy.
This Didn't Come Out of Nowhere
Indonesia has not been quietly moving in a liberal direction on LGBTQ rights. The country criminalized same-sex relations outside of marriage under a revised criminal code passed in 2022, a law that human rights groups warned would chill freedoms far beyond its stated targets. Prabowo, who took office in October 2024, has continued a trajectory that his predecessor Joko Widodo had already begun tilting in a more socially conservative direction under pressure from Islamist political groups.
What is new here is the framing. Calling queer existence a defense threat is a specific rhetorical escalation. It moves the state's posture from "we disapprove" to "we are defending ourselves from you." That is not a small distinction. Countries that treat minority identities as security threats have a well-documented history of what comes next, and it is not a happy one.
For the roughly 270 million people living in Indonesia, including its LGBTQ citizens who already live under significant legal and social pressure, this regulation is a signal from the top about exactly how the government views them.
The International Silence Is Loud
As of this writing, there has been no significant public response from Western governments, international human rights bodies, or major diplomatic partners. No statement from Washington. No formal rebuke from Brussels. Indonesia is a significant geopolitical player in Southeast Asia, a member of the G20, and a country that counts the United States, Australia, and the European Union among its key partners.
Human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented Indonesia's worsening record on LGBTQ rights in recent years, but the formal military classification of LGBTQ culture as a national security threat is a new and specific escalation that international partners have so far chosen not to loudly address. The silence is a choice. It is also a signal.
The Dingo Take
Here is the honest answer to the question of what this regulation accomplishes: it does not make Indonesia safer from terrorism, cyberattacks, separatism, or any of the other actual threats on that list. What it does is give the Indonesian national defense apparatus formal legal grounding to treat LGBTQ people as enemies of the state. That is the function. Dressing it up in the language of sovereignty and territorial integrity does not change what it is.
Prabowo signed this in October 2025 and the world is only now paying close attention. That gap matters. These things do not stay contained. Governments that classify their own citizens as security threats tend to find new ways to act on that classification over time, and Indonesia's LGBTQ community is going to be living under this framework for the next four years at minimum.
The 2025-2029 defense policy period runs right up to the next Indonesian election cycle. Whoever comes after Prabowo will inherit a national defense architecture that has formally baked anti-LGBTQ hostility into its operational logic. You do not undo that with one election. You rarely undo it at all.
