On Apr 16, 2010, at 10:38 PM, SA wrote:
> Barney Frank can be an out member of Congress more because of the
> legacy of the liberation movements of the 60's and 70's than because
> of the alleged libertarianism of the neoliberal era.
Sure, the movements of the 1960s and 1970s had a lot to do with it. But where did they come from? I thought that the standard story of the emergence of modern homosexuality was that capitalism loosened family ties and created the urban space for the development of gay subcultures that more and more emerged from the underground. And after the initial burst of gay liberation 40 years ago, capitalist society was able to absorb the demands of sexual minorities - rather like feminism (which is related to the widely hated Walter Benn Michaels argument about identity and neoliberalism). What capitalism could never recuperate are the demands of labor for power and redistribution.
Doug