<HTML>Marta: You seem to be busy and 'under the gun' right now, so you need not feel obliged to answer these comments. I offer them for the general consideration of the listserv. I believe it is necessary to make a distinction between espousing a normative philosophy [i.e., a philosophy committed to the establishment and pursuit of a certain social or political norms] and the process of normalization [i.e., homogenization around singular norms, such as heterosexuality.] This is a distinction, I would argue, analogous to the difference between authority and authoritarianism -- it is a mistake to collapse authority, which is an essential feature of social living, into authoritarianism, an unbridled, unchecked form of the rule of authority. The issue how to build and nurture democratic forms of authority. Likewise, the issue is to construct and maintain democratic and pluralist norms. I don't doubt that the normative philosophies of Rawls or Habermas are lacking with respect to the politics of disability: they are also lacking with respect to the politics of race, gender and sexuality, as various critics have pointed out. But the question that must be asked is whether or not this is a problem inherent in all normative philosophies, or whether it is rooted in the specific ways in which Rawls and Habermas construct their particular normative philosophies. I would argue the latter, with some qualifications. I think that there is an intrinsic danger of normative philosophies incorporating a logic of normalization, especially when they employ -- as Rawls and Habermas do -- 'strong' ontologies with positive claims concerning human nature. But how can one postulate a different political philosophy, one which is radically pluralist and egalitarian with respect to race, gender, sexuality and disability, without supplying some normative basis for it? Wouldn't such a political philosophy rest on certain normative claims concerning differences among human beings, and how such differences should be socially and politically accommodated? Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- </HTML>