The empire is well aware of the utility of identity politics in selling its civilizing mission, and it wants witting and unwitting pawns in every politically relevant group, not just GLBTQ: women, students, scholars, journalists, trade unionists, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, and so on. That's been a long-standing program, except the GLBTQ angle is relatively new (which probably will be exploited more under the next POTUS who is likely to be HRC). As far as Iran is concerned, the most useful ones for the empire are probably unscrupulous characters among Iranian expatriates (including those gay Iranian expatriates who advance claims such as "Some sources have reported 4000 executions of homosexuals' form 1979 to 2000" in Iran [at <http://www.pglo.net/IRQO/English/pages/046.htm>]) and Ahwaz, Kurdish, and other separatists.
> a cultural relativistic denial of gay oppression while hoping for
> a revival of premodern forms of sexuality
At the level of theory:
Western liberals promote their cultural particularism as if it were cultural universalism, positing their culture as the end of humanity and their path as the universal path of development; those who live in the global South and who are not liberals tend toward cultural relativism, often mistaking the creation of capitalist modernity in the West for the timeless essence of the West to be distinguished from the timeless essence of their cultures. Historical materialism differs from both, seeing contingent evolutions of diverse ways of life, now all colored in the ether of the capitalist mode of production to various degrees, which may or may not converge in the future that is still open.
At the level of empiricist practice:
Just because this or that gay activist says x, y, z happen doesn't necessarily mean that they actually do, and just because gay oppression exists in Iran for a minority who so identify doesn't mean that 4,000 homosexuals have been executed in Iran since 1979 as IRQO would have us believe. Each claim made must be examined for its truth, just like any claim made by anyone.
> but to question the legality of testing peoples' most private
> opinions as a condition for right bearing citizenship.
One of the de jure discriminations that probably cannot be eliminated under capitalism and the nation-state system is that between citizens and non-citizens.
> To call identity activists agents of Empire casts
> a penumbra of multiple meanings.
To repeat what I said, "[Once de jure discrimination gets abolished, t]hose old criticisms of sexism, racism, heterosexism, etc. that were aimed at attainment of equal rights become neutralized at best and become agents of capital and empire at worst." One, I'm referring, first and foremost, to ideology rather than individuals who are caught up in it. Two, not all identity activists directly become agents of the empire. That ought to be clear from the end of the sentence: they do so _at worst_. Most of them are just neutralized, most often happily or unhappily mediating their "communities" with electoral political parties (usually center-left ones, occasionally center-right ones) that are committed to the empire.
During the Vietnam War, the Gay Liberation Front raised slogans such as "Suck Cock to Beat the Draft." Nowadays, such a liberationist perspective is a marginalized one in the GLBTQ communities, and the dominant demand regarding the armed forces by the major GLBTQ organizations is to demand an equal right to serve. A perfectly legitimate demand in terms of liberalism, one crucial for attainment of full citizenship, but one that is hard to reconcile with anti-imperialist politics, let alone a socialist one, for the USA is an empire currently at war.
On 10/10/07, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
> CB wrote:
>
> >As a teenager, like many teenagers, I lived under a regime of sexual
> >repression. I didn't feel close to death.
>
> Gay and lesbian teenagers who commit suicide apparently felt
> close to death.
Have I mentioned that predominantly Muslim nations have low rates of suicide, according to WHO? Perhaps "Islam + sodomy (act) - alcohol" is better for suicide prevention than "liberalism + homosexuality (identity) + alcohol."
A (homo)erotic religion that is at once sexy and sober, safe (free condoms, abortions, and contraceptives) and seductive, just may be exactly what the 21st century needs. How do we make such a religion out of Islam?
With regard to same-sex sex, Muslims might first explicitly elevate their everyday practice to theory and then revise it, developing "new principles for the world out of the world's own principles" (Marx to Ruge, Kreuznach, September 1843, <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm>). If any Muslim (perhaps a Persian Princess of my dream, who looks as if she just stepped out of an ancient miniature and slipped right into leather-and-laces modernity) desires to attempt it, here is a GGG historical materialist delighted to serve her in all conceivable ways, in practice as well as theory.
"One seeks a midwife for his thoughts, another someone to whom he can be a midwife: thus originates a good conversation." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, <http://books.google.com/books?id=pQqWigp1pv0C&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100&dq=%22one+seeks+a+midwife+for+his+thoughts%22&source=web&ots=hIE3lEk_jf&sig=vhg2WCwF6LZn0n4KuuYZ9M3FUzc>
<http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide_rates/en/index.html> Suicide rates per 100,000 by country, year and sex (Table) Most recent year available; as of 2007
<http://www.who.int/whr/2001/chapter2/en/index6.html> The world health report 2001 - Mental Health: New Understanding, New Hope
Chapter 2: Burden of Mental and Behavioural Disorders
Suicide
Alcohol consumption (for example, in the Baltic States and the Russian Federation) and easy access to some toxic substances (for example, in China, India and Sri Lanka) and to firearms (for example, in El Salvador and the United States) seem to be positively correlated with suicide rates across all countries industrialized or developing so far studied.
<http://www.med.uio.no/iasp/files/papers/Bertolote.pdf> José Manoel Bertolote and Alexandra Fleishmann A Global Perspective in the Epidemiology of Suicide Suicidologi 7.2 (2002): 6-7
-- Yoshie