i want to try to and tonight, and if use that calm that ,-comcome and to try to think rather than feel about this topic. and i ask you tonight also to help me do that, because there's so much emotion, legitimately, about this subject, that thinking is sometimes hard. the first concept of politics of homosexuality, prohibitionism, has actually had a much stronger and longer life than i expected it would act in the early 1990s. prohibitionism was, of course, the absolute consensus in america and indeed most of the world for the vast majority of existence of humankind. it is still the overwhelming politics for the overwhelming number of homosexual men and lesbian women, and bisexual and transgender people in the world are today, we see in africa a rather terrifying movement to criminalize, imprison and execute homosexuals, in the united states created by the american religious right. in my lifetime when i grew up, when i was born in my old country, homosexuality was illegal. it was criminal. people were jailed. people lived in fear. today, they still live in fear. not know in many parts o