In an era when the right to health has refashioned global health policymaking, how has global health addressed LGBT health disparities? To identify the ways in which institutional and epistemological apparatuses of global health policymaking have made LGBT health concerns “scientifically” ignorable, this chapter begins with an analysis of a related debate at the World Health Organization (WHO) that took place between 2013 and 2016, when the issue was “closeted” again. Reviewing this debate and drawing on the interactions between international organizations and queer activists in Asia enables us to critically understand state-centered LGBT health politics. Queer activists from this region have been concerned about representation issues related to LGBT health issues – either being underrepresented or being overexposed by mainstream media and national policies.

This chapter considers such ambivalence toward “global healthification,” to extend Meyer and Schwartz’ (American Journal of Public Health, 90(8), 1189–1191, 2000) concerns about the public healthification of social injustice issues. Reframing discrimination and marginalization against LGBT people as a public/global health issue is potentially helpful to draw the attention of scientific and epidemiological researchers; it may also harm queer people at the local level due to the power to define diseases and determine control measures held in the hands of the states. Through presenting the ambivalence toward the global healthifying of social injustices against LGBT people, this chapter argues that global health policy studies should broaden the understanding of the social and political determinants of health and recognize sexual and gender diversity as a precondition of global health justice.