On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, BklynMagus wrote:
> What I think is more accurate to say is that their viewpoint has been
> so abnsorbed by society, that they do not need to be as flagrant
> as they used to be. Even much of the left has given up on queer/sexual
> rights as a vital issue.
>
Let's keep things in historical perspective: as recently as 1970, homosexuality was officially diagnosed as a symptom of mental illness, and people in the U. S. were forced to undergo aversion therapy to "cure" them of their sexual disorder. (Aversion therapy is more or less classical conditioning: pair an aversive stimulus with X until X also triggers an aversive response in someone.) --The "treatment" for homosexuality was exposing homosexual men to pictures of men having sex while applying a shock or nausea drug. Yes, this brutal "psychotherapy" was applied to thousands of gays and lesbians. Today, this would be considered malpractice by any licensed psychiatrist or psychologist.
I agree that we still live in a heterosexist society, but it is far from true that the perspective of the religious right has been "absorbed" by our society. Far from it: every generation in the U. S. over the past century is more humane and more tolerant of sexual differences than the generation before, the bloviating of the religious right notwithstanding.
Miles