This chapter explores how political economy shapes the social organization of sexuality and intimacy, in particular, modern formations of LGBT people. Political economy affects sexuality at three broad levels: (1) through the articulation of kinship and gender with the division of labor, it creates both openings and limits to same-sex relationships; (2) through demands imposed on contemporary workers, citizens, and consumers by neoliberalism, markets influence norms of conduct and success strategies even in personal relationships; (3) political economy generates hierarchies of entitlement and exclusion which impact LGBT peoples and the social constituencies around them who construct them as symbols of progress or decline. Reviewing both historical and anthropological evidence and the growing international divide between LGBT-affirming and repressing countries, the chapter contextualizes current contentions about the rise of homonationalism in a larger geopolitics of north and south.