In Lebanon as elsewhere in the Arab World there have been more engaged public and private activism addressing the rights of LGBTQI communities. While alternative family structures have allowed for alternative sexualities to exist and thrive behind the scenes, these have often been mostly in the private realm and shrouded with silence. As such, heteronormativity continued to uphold societal expectations of family, adulthood, and citizenship. Today, there are efforts to provide ongoing support to young men and women struggling for acceptance and understanding of their sexual identities and beginnings of demands to provide legitimacy to alternative family structures, sexualities, and gender identities. While some scholars and activists have argued these trends are fostered by what they call the “gay international” and westernization, others have begun to unveil the ‘authentic’ nature of these movements. Activists in Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco are forming the basis of a broad base movement supportive of alternative sexualities, requesting approval and acceptance of society, and advocating for legal changes. This paper will interrogate heteronormativity in Lebanon, looking at the exclusionary nature of dominant concepts of family, marriage, and gender roles. It will examine how dominant discourses and practices of family and marriage, exclude certain categories of people from ‘adulthood’ and ‘citizenship’. Joseph, Khater, and others have articulated the patriarchal nature of the Lebanese state and that citizenship is often mediated through family relationships and sectarian affiliations. Once excluded from these normative relationships, where does Lebanon’s queer community find support, achieve its rights, and belong. These violent exclusionary practices force people whose identities or desires lie outside the boundaries of gender and sexual normativity such as queers subjects to leave Lebanon and try to form their own families in other countries, to exist on the margin of society, or to engage in fake normative family practices.