there were no homosexuals before the late 19th century, when the term homosexuality was invented. people laugh, but foucault made a great career out of this argument. he is absolutely right in many respects, that in different cultures and different times in a different era is and places, how homosexuality has been described, what it has immense, how homosexuals have understood themselves, the words they had used, the variety of ways in which it has been expressed has varied enormously to such an extent, to say that someone living in eight century byzantium thought of himself as a gay man is idiotic.

no historian would disagree with that. foucault's brilliance was to understand exactly that and to try to free us from these constructs he thought are actually in prison in us. all that mattered in the end was feelings and desires. heterosexuality and homosexuality dissolve into just a variety of acts. you can see also the causes and within foucault, because catholicism is all about the sexual act and understanding that. so he wants to reduce everything to that as well and claim that has any sustaining more permanent meeting. most students in today's ivy league will be told that they are clear.

to be gay and lesbian is to be in permanent constructionist revolt against any kind category whatsoever. it is a prominent rebel [inaudible] and human freedom. this is what we call queer liberation. in which we study texts and deconstructs them and steady words and deconstructs them, and look our lives and the construct them. -- d. construct them. the whole idea of gay rights is in itself oppressive. for foucault, it probably was. in his later years, before he died, there seemed to be some shift in his thinking, but i cannot read what he might have evolved into. i want to agree with him, that there is the obvious variety of

expressions, understandings, but i do not think it goes all the way down. i think there is something that's just there that we seem to understand and all i can say as with my own experience and maybe your experience, to ask yourself as deeply as you can -- most gay people have had to ask themselves that in a way most straight people have not had to ask -- because it ever had to question their sexuality. sigmund freud was interesting because he thought heterosexuality had to be explained just as much as homosexuality. i do think that in fact, these acts and feelings sexually and emotionally are not just act and feelings. they are, as human beings in nature, acts and feelings that are related to other people and those people are members of two genders. if you are of one gender and

attracted to another gender, it is not something you have constructed. this is a very a lever way of saying you can't help what turned you on. -- this is an elaborate way of saying you cannot help what turns you on. you cannot help you -- you cannot help who you fall in love with. this is a phenomenal logical fact that that is how people live and experience. when i wrote my book, i have to begin by saying what is homosexuality? this is how i experience it. this is how everybody i have known experienced it. it has emerged from them deeply, just as a heterosexual audie emerges from people deeply. you do not think we first fall in love that i am heterosexual. or on a homosexual. you think i'm so and love with

david or jane. you cannot deconstructs that. its eternal and it has been part of us forever. for some reason, biologists and geneticists are trying to figure out and he lucian telerate -- and with shared biologists have all sorts of theories -- a very small minority of human beings have that experience with members of the same gender. there you have it. it is an experience that seems to be in every culture and every time in every place. it is not therefore socially constructed. a huge amount of the rest of it is, but when you get all the way down, there is some core, solid concrete beneath that is reality. that is what we call our sexual orientation. there is also something rather bizarre to my mind about

liberation allism because they are railing against gay oppression. but shouldn't they actually be seeking gay oppression? is in the experience of the outsider and the marginalized and persecutor -- persecuted, which is essential to the version of the clear, presented -- threatened by quality and inclusion? if the role is to be the outsiders, why would we ever seek to belong? why is clear liberation los -- why is clear liberation wasn't trying to include any people all. -- before many of you were born, -- i feel so old these days -- dell was precisely the argument. we don't want marriage, we don't

want equal marriage rights, we want to destroy marriage altogether. we don't want to join the military. we'll want straight people to join the military. we want to destroy the military altogether. so, in the end, the irony of liberation this is that they seek to perpetuate the oppression of gay people. except of course, almost all of them are too humane to actually go there. instead, they take it out on day conservatives. do you see what i mean? there is something inherent about this politically. you cannot worship being in prison as the core of your identity and then ask to have the key to get out. in the end, it becomes a prison you have beautifully decorated.

you make a charming home and got knows we homosexuals are good that. [laughter] the third politics of homosexuality i feel like i'm on some monty python speech. the third politics i call conservatism. i mean this not in the way conservatism as currently understood in this country. i mean classic conservative temperament, which is we like. it's a very english yew. why do you have to keep bringing up? can we all just get along?

why you have to talk about sex all the time? why we even have to talk about this? gays in the military? there was a time when we didn't have to deal with this subject, can we please go back there? i don't want to hate you but i don't want to acknowledge you exist. [laughter] these are also good people, many of them. but of course in last 20 years, the possibility of that happening is over. the closet has collapsed. looking at admiral mullen, things different between then and now, it for of congress, he said he had always served alongside gays and lesbians in the military. as most soldiers, especially sailers, will always tell you -- [laughter] -- not to denigrate the air force or marines, heaven knows

not the marines. [laughter] but now we understood it was a violation that they have to lie about who they are because our society has evolved to the point where these people are not actually closeted themselves in their real lives, just have to pretend to be someone else with the military. this is an enormous and cruel imposition upon these people. because society has evolved to such extent of these people's lives are very obvious, other people sometimes for malicious reasons, about them and their careers are over. this is not an honorable thing to happen. the honor of the united states military and the integrity, which was the word he used, of the american soldier will no longer allow this conservatism

to remain. you will also notice that the closet politician is becoming rare or more ridiculous. larry craig is the only person, apart from his wife, who seems to think he is heterosexual in the entire united states of america. we can pretend otherwise, but not many heterosexuals spend a lot of time in bathrooms with their feet and the apart. -- 10 feet apart. you will also notice the disappearance of openly gay republicans. there are none in the congress of the united states. . -- none. why? because the cost of a gay person today to be in the republican party, which is no longer a conservative party but it fundamentalist party, it is impossible to sustain.

log cabin republicans launched a tender 15 years ago had a chance of making it, have all but given up. the right wing fringe of a log cabin republicans, a group called g.o. proud, sponsored a booth at the conservative conference in d.c., which i am so sorry i missing -- what is interesting about those gay republicans as they are all openly gay. what is also interesting is they all support equal marriage rights top military service, openly gay military service, and they oppose a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. there are no gay people left in this country able to actually support the agenda of the republican party because the atmosphere that it created has disappeared. it is over.

that's what's happening. in britain, to give you a simple counterexample, the country i left 24 years ago, the conservative party, if it wins the next election, which is happening within a hundred days, if it wins the next election by one seat majority, we will have 15 openly gay openlymps. two of them will be in the cabinet. i had dinner two nights ago with a shadow minister for the environment is not only openly gay, is also married under britain possible partnership laws with every single right every heterosexual has and he is campaigning to win gave votes for conservative values. -- wingate votes for conservative values. that's a logical continuing next up in society. that means the party is over and the old conservative is dead.

what has happened in this country is that those people have left what is increasingly a fundamentalist party that seeks not only that gay people stay in the closet but embraces the idea that they should be cured. and is actually fomenting campaigns they be executed in africa. i'm running out of time. liberalism -- no. 4 -- liberalism understands homosexuals as a protected and that the class. they see the entire, sexual question in terms of the classic civil rights construct in which minorities need to be protected from majority hatred and majority oppression. they need special protections from these things. there must because that impossible to fire someone,

private people with in the private sphere, not the government, because they are gay. we must have hate crimes laws so that people, laws, if someone kills somebody because they happen to be walking down the street and has all lot of money, and somebody kills somebody because he else faggot at the needs to have a higher penalty under a lot of the other act of violence. because the minority group is so vulnerable to fear at terror spreads throughout the broader community is of great that laws must make a special note that there are not americans, but african-americans, korean- americans, gay and lesbian americans, and the job of the

civil-rights movement is to make sure this next group is included in that category. then we are fine. i think this comes from an extremely benevolence and good place. what i worry about is that it balkanizes society into different sections and places and generates by its very structure of the language racial, sexual, and sexual orientation divisions and provoked resentment among those who did not seem to be protected and generates a particular argument that yes, some people are arguing for special rights. i don't believe minorities should have any more rights than a month -- that a majority. they should all have rights. i don't believe that minorities should be allowed to be

discriminated against by the government, that is what the courts are for. that is -- i do believe minorities can, should, and must look hatred in the face and be confident enough to stare down without the necessity of law and the government pretending they do not have the capacity. i believe the doctrines and attitudes that liberalism foster's with these special groups and categories actually sadly in trenches in the human psyche the feeling that day -- that homosexuals -- in some sense, it's infantilizes. as someone who believes in free speech, we should never criminalize bigotry.

just as we should never criminalize any kind of good speech. i believe the freedom of the bigot is also the freedom of the profit. government at any particular time will never be able to know forever which is which and all government should do is make sure both have the freedom to say and think anything they want. the only limit should be it should never be speech that is a threat of violence that actually explicitly targets any specific person. i believe, that is why i defended the right of the boy scouts to discriminate against gay scoutmasters, even though i think the policy is abhorrent, because i believe once you accept the principle that a private group cannot discriminate against people it decides for its own particular reason, whatever the reason is,

then the groups are most vulnerable from government interference are the ones that are the smallest. gay people among them. the right of the nazis or kkk to walk down the street under the first amendment is indistinguishable from the right of the drag queen to walk proudly down the street in the gay pride parade. i want to defend both of them, not because one of them as good and one is bad, because both of them are acts of freedom. if we start, as gay people, infringing upon the first amendment, the fundamental right to say what and be who we are, we will finally be the victims because there are not that many of us. we will be the people who are the victims of this kind of intimidation.

i also believe for those reasons we should be extremely careful in enacting equality for gay men and women, that we protect the religious liberties of people who, for whatever reason, sincerely believe this is against their conscience. even if there's not much reason in this, is not the role of the government to tell a religious person they are not reasonable. at some level, every religious person is not reasonable. religion is not about reason. what i worry about, and i worry about the legitimacy of people, is once you start down this path of protecting particular groups of people, other people and their freedoms to say and be and speak will be affected. lastly, i want to see gay people

are very particular kind of minority. very strange in some ways, different from any other racial minority group we think of. which makes them -- because they should not be put up part, all minorities should not be balkanize or set apart, because every homosexual is born into a have -- and to a heterosexual family. at least almost everyone. most of us with our allies deeply embedded in -- most of us live our lives in deeply heterosexual culture. most african-american kids grow up in an african american household. most jewish kids grow up in a jewish household. they're part of a minority you can easily demarcate. they're part of a majority that creates themselves the same culture from birth on. not true of gay people.

we are spread randomly through the population in every family. we live and breathe as heterosexuals and included within heterosexual culture because we do not -- because they do not realize yet, unless we tell them or unless it is so obvious that they have to kick in a bunch of the mile. which they're very talented at. -- a bunch of denial. this fact that we are embedded from our birth on in our formative years makes setting us apart in later years even more condescending and balkanizing and stigmatizing in a strange way. it's a benign form of stigmatization. it entrenches the idea that we somehow need to be protected more than other people. my view, and this is where the libertarian right meets the liberation is left is the right

attitude is those drag queens that fought back at stonewall, who stood up for themselves and did not seek the law and bashed the cops back, what i loved about that was its there was this in declaring there is nothing wrong with being gay and gave as good, gay is good, a day is good. -- gay is good. why is something that is in good something we should be frightened of being persecuted for? bring it on. bring it on. i love debating the religious right. why? because i'm not afraid of those people. why? because i'm not a persecuted minority desperate and unable to defend myself. the first thing i defend myself with is the first amendment.

that's what i'm doing here tonight, and what gay people have done for centuries. i need to conclude. the politics i argued, the alternative to all of these four things, has in a couple of decades since i first heard making this argument come to pass. we have seen, and the argument was, the core argument is that the government should stop treating us differently. the government should stop identifying us as different and stop discriminating against us. we are equal and our government should freed us equally. that means our relationships -- should treat us equally. our relationships should be treated no differently in any way shape or form that a

heterosexual relationship that is identical in its commitment, fidelity, it's love and passion. i will never accept that somehow my love for my husband should be quarantined into something called a civil union or symbol partnership or euphemized in such a way that's not the exact equivalent of the relationship of my sister and her husband. i am not going to be written out of my own family. there is no reason why any day person should never accept anything but full equality under the law. separate is not equal. we are our own families. we live and our own families. we are not something other than the family. the defense of the family means the defense of homosexuals.

there is no difference. we should fight for a difference. the military service of soldiers to live there -- who risked their lives and who died for this country should never be treated in any way differently than their heterosexual peers. they should always be treated and rewarded or punished on the basis of rules that apply to everyone equally. that can be done and it should be done. segregation is wrong, it was wrong racially, it was wrong sexually, it is wrong with respect to sexual orientation. civil unions and domestic partnerships and anything short of civil marriage is a form of segregation and a form of stigmatization which no self respecting date person should tolerate for a second.

people will object that religion is such a powerful thing and that unreason should therefore be given a special privilege over reason and equality and truth. if religion is not about truth, what is it about? if religion is not about the sincere seeking the truth, what is it about? the civil protections i'm talking about, the civil equality i am talking about, the ability to be treated like everyone else, is a simple thing and not a religious thing. -- a simple thing, not a religious thing. it is a marriage license issued by a civil entity. it has nothing to do with religion. atheists get married every day of the week.

by local clerks, but town clerks, by civil officials. they never have anything to do with any of them religion at all. the idea that a religious group should be able to say who and who cannot be married is absurd. let me give you a simple example -- the great inconsistency within the catholic teachings. it is the catholic church campaigning to make civil divorce illegal? it is the existence of civil divorce an attack upon the family? is it an attack upon marriage? divorce is absolutely forbidden within the catholic church. it affects far more people than the situation of a marriage. why is there not a defense of marriage act to do -- to prevent the worst people from remarrying? if there has to be in defense of marriage at to prevent the people from being married. be consistent.

they're not. irrational, they are not. treat us equally, they are not. -- be rational, they are not. lastly, yes, it is a simple question about civil equality and is very simple. what is it that we are really fighting for in the gay-rights movement? it is that there should never beat a gay rights movement in the future. i want to abolish the gay-rights movement. i want to shut it down. i want to achieve civil quality so that distinction between homosexual and heterosexual in the political world is irrelevant. i want a day to come when there is no human rights campaign and no national gay and lesbian task force, the service member's legal defense network,