Throwing Sex Under the Bus: Sexuality vs Rights in a Post-Gay World

• In Event: Changing Discourse, Stable Ideologies: Strange Twists and Dangerous Turns in Rhetoric about GLBTQ Issues

Abstract

Historical accounts of LGBTQ activism often stress the differences between gay and lesbian activism, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. While this history of difference highlights an important dimension of a formative period in the struggle for LGBTQ equality, it also obscures the interest both gay men and lesbians had in calling for sexual liberation, defined not only as an issue of human rights but also as a more expansive view of sexual practice. This paper explores the ways in which much current rhetoric about rights further obscures the importance of sex and sexuality by placing increased legal rights and social acceptance in opposition to freedom of sexual expression. In particular, the idea of “maturing” away from sex and sexuality to more presumably “adult” issues, as a term to describe both the movement itself and the people in it, is explored.

Author

• Matthew J. Sobnosky, Hofstra University