Henry [Roy's doctor]: No?
Roy: No. Like all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order? Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I fuck or who fucks me, but who will pick up the phone when I call, who owes me favors. This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot get a pissant antidiscrimination bill through City Council. Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me, Henry?
Henry: No.
Roy: No. I have clout. A lot. I can pick up this phone, punch fifteen numbers, and you know who will be on the other end in under five minutes, Henry?
Henry: The President.
Roy: Even better, Henry. His wife.
Henry: I'm impressed.
Roy: I don't want you to be impressed. I want you to understand. This is not sophistry. And this is not hypocrisy. This is reality. I have sex with men. But unlike nearly every other man of whom this is true, I bring the guy I'm screwing to the White House and President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand. Because _what_ I am is defined entirely by _who_ I am. Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fucks around with guys.
Henry: OK, Roy.
Roy: And what is my diagnosis, Henry?
Henry: You have AIDS, Roy.
Roy: No, Henry, no. AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer....
(Tony Kushner, _Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches_, Act I, Scene 9) *****
On one hand, Kushner gives Roy Cohn a "social constructionist" insight: labels are effects of power, "homosexuals" are men without any clout. On the other hand, Kushner reveals that a "social constructionist" insight into the constitution of "normals" & "abnormals" and oppressions based on it cannot acknowledge real risks of real diseases -- "AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer" -- though in the collection of health statistics deaths of so-called "heterosexuals" must have been often chalked up to "liver cancer," etc.
Diseases are real, risks of unprotected sex are real, but the classification of human beings according to so-called "sexual orientations" is ideological (an ideological effect of the social divisions of labor based upon sexism in a capitalist society).
Yoshie