This news from India (as reported in The Guardian) is inspiring, especially considering the the names attached to the pro-queer alliance of authors and other cultural figures. They are trying to oveturn an old Victorian-era law that criminalizes homosexual acts.
One thing jumped out at me, though. I'll quote the passage and then comment:
"In an open letter, more than 100 influential signatories, including the Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen, the Booker prizewinner Arundhati Roy, and author Vikram Seth, said the law had been used to "systematically persecute, blackmail, arrest and terrorise sexual minorities" and had spawned intolerance."
Let's consider what is meant by "sexual minorities." Sure, there are less queer-identified people in any given nation than there are non-queer identified folk, and in that sense we are minorities, but where do we draw the line between queer and not-queer? And the big question: What is QUEER sex? What kind of sex makes you a minority--the kind you enjoy?
It seems to me the conservatism that seeks to oppress us is also concerned with oppressing all kinds of sexual expression--not just the queer variety. Conservatism seeks to halt sex education and replace it with abstinence-only education. It yearns to keep us not only from the dildo store, but also from discussing our fantasies in any format by sounding the pornography alarms. Never mind the fact that if it were okay for us to discuss sex more openly, there would probably be a lot less porn.
Conservatism wants you to think that there is such a thing as a sexual minority to which they are opposed, but in reality they are against ANY sexual enjoyment/experimentation.
What happens when, say, conservatism succeeds in completely villifyiing queer-folk on the basis of our sexual practices? It won't stop with us. There will always be another sexual deviant--even if you removed all of us wierdos and sodomites from the face of the planet, there will always be another group of people (women who enjoy role-play, men who want to be sex slaves, anybody who has ever enjoyed porn, lube, a vibrator) to villify. Conservatism is trying to overturn a sexual MAJORITY by dividing it into little parts it can contain and label "immoral" and "ungodly." Make no mistake, their prejudice is against SEX, it just so happens that the sex-du-jour they are spending more money on to attack is the kind enjoyed by queer-folk. Not to worry, many kinds of consensual, safe SEX are on their agendas.
To loosely quote Kate Bornstein from an interview she did with us recently (to be posted soon): "Who likes sex? Raise your hand."
If you do enjoy it, I hope you realize we're all in this together, even if the kind of sex we enjoy is different.
One more thing, the article I linked to in the Guardian is about India, and I'm only addressing American conservatism as I see it. To any of our Indian and/or conservative readers--your comments are appreciated.