NATIONAL JOURNAL OF SEXUAL ORIENTATION LAW
                         VOL. 1, ISSUE 1
            Mary Sylla, editor (mmsylla@gibbs.oit.unc.edu)



 Coming Out and Stepping Up: Queer Legal Theory and Connectivity

                        Francisco Valdes1


               [Copyright, 1993: Francisco Valdes]
   =20
                            Contents


Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

I.   QUEER LEGAL THEORY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

     A.   Sexual Minorityhood and Queer Consciousness. . . . . .6

          1.   Pre-Stonewall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
          2.   Post-Stonewall. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

     B.   Naming and Situating the Missing Voice . . . . . . . 12

          1.   Responsiveness and Accountability . . . . . . . 14
          2.   Joining Hands With Feminism=20
               and Critical Race Theory. . . . . . . . . . . . 15

               a.   Queers, Feminists & the Sex/Gender Self. . 15
               b.   Critical Race Theory, Multiplicity
                    =A0Intersectionality. . . . . . . . . . . . 17

     C.   Social Constructionism & Queer Legal Theory. . . . . 21

     D.   Lesbians, Gay Androsexism & Queer Legal Theory . . . 23


II.  CONNECTIVITY & COALITION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

     A.   Connectivity Defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

     B.   Psycho-Social Isolation & Connectivity . . . . . . . 28

          1.   Connectivity & the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

          2.   Connectivity & the Present. . . . . . . . . . . 33

          3.   Connectivity & the Future . . . . . . . . . . . 35

     C.   A Note on Coalition and Connectivity . . . . . . . . 39


III. PERSONAL EPILOGUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

     A.   Left-handed, Bald-headed Golfers and the Law . . . . 40

     B.   The Consciousness Curve. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

     C.   My Selves, My Kinds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41


Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42=0C
                          Introduction
     It takes about a quarter century for us humans to grow into
maturity as individuals, but this span of time amounts to less
than a speck in the collective story of humanity.  Yet, as a
group, sexual minorities2 in this country have attained a
maturity during the past twenty five years that is truly
remarkable.  In fact, the twenty five years that have elapsed
since the Stonewall Riots have seen the birth and growth of an
entire people at a rate that delights some, frightens others, but
astonishes all.
     During this time, sexual minorities have journeyed from
total invisibility, shame-filled isolation, and unchallenged
subordination to an unapologetic sense of self-definition and
group identity.  This journey, though relatively brief in time,
has given rise to momentous developments, including the
establishment of "sexual minorityhood" and the coalescence of
"Queer"3 consciousness.  In short, during this time we have
progressed from the spontaneous combustion that produced the 1969
Stonewall Riots in New York City to the nationwide orchestration
of time, energy, and resources that culminated in last year's
March on Washington. =20
     This Journal, whose inauguration coincides with the 25th
anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, marks yet another step in
this progression because this Journal bears witness to a growing
Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual presence and sensibility within legal
culture, a sensibility of openness and pride that simply did not
exist a few years ago.  As elaborated below, this sensibility is
more generally rooted in, and benefits from, the evolution of
Queer social identity during this past quarter century because
these broad cultural developments helped to create a general
climate of relative receptivity for the emergence of sexual
minority scholars within legal culture.  In great measure, Queer
legal consciousness is the outgrowth of social Queer
consciousness. =20
     However, these developments also pose a challenge to legal
culture, and more specifically to the nascent sexual minority
communities within legal culture.  By setting the stage for the
emergence of sexual minority scholars, these developments poise
legal culture for the emergence of a long-denied voice in
critical legal scholarship: Queer Legal Theory.  The creation of
Queer legal theory is the challenge that Queerness poses to legal
culture.
     This essay traces the evolution of social consciousness that
makes this new voice possible and urgent, delineates a basic
statement of mission for Queer critiques of law that is
responsive to this newfound Queer identity, and urges the
development of a common front with Feminist and Critical Race
scholarship in light of our common oppressions.  Part I opens
this essay with a call for the advent and cultivation of "Queer
legal theory" as a cross-disciplinary and self-conscious
exploration of way in which legal doctrines, customs, and
practices impact on sexual minorities as sexual minorities.  Part
II addresses an ideal relationship between Queer legal theory and
Critical Race theory and Feminism, introducing the concept of
"connectivity" against the backdrop of multiplicity and
intersectionality developed by Critical Race and Feminist
scholars.  Part III is a personal epilogue that considers some
objections to Queer legal theory or to connectivity, and relies
explicitly on my individual history and subjective sense of
self/ves and community/ies to illustrate and underscore the
theoretical points raised previously.

                               I. =20
                       QUEER LEGAL THEORY
     The initiation of Queer legal theory, as envisioned here, is
made possible and necessary by the formation of a Queer community
and consciousness that literally did not exist before the
Stonewall Riots.  Queer legal theory is made possible by this
newfound sensibility because this new community has attained
"sexual minorityhood"-- Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and the trans-
gendered now form bona fide and functional minorities akin to
women and racial or ethnic minorities.  The initiation of Queer
legal theory is made necessary as well by the sense of resolute
opposition to continued subordination that in recent years has
arisen among sexual minorities and that increasingly seems to
define sexual minority consciousness.  This section therefore
traces the progression of sexual minorities toward sexual
minorityhood and Queer consciousness.

A.   Sexual Minorityhood & Queer Consciousness
     The twenty fifth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, being
commemorated this year, fairly may be viewed as marking a
milestone in the development and maturation of sexual minorities
as such because those riots mark the "big bang" in the formation
of a cultural context for sexual minorityhood, a bang that was
big enough to set off continuing repercussions.4  However, the
formation of culturally cohesive sexual minorities in this
country during the past several decades comprises four relatively
distinct eras.  Two of these mark the years preceding Stonewall
and the other two mark the years since.  During this time,
Lesbians and Gay men left behind the terror and atomization of
the past and began to coalesce culturally.  Combining the
production and development of a new consciousness with the
creation and expansion of community structures, this coalescing
has given rise to sexual minorityhood: today, sexual minorities
have achieved a recognizable sense of group consciousness, have
carved out public spaces for the needs and activities of vibrant
and flourishing communities, and have secured privates spaces
within them for our families.  These years thus span the time
during which sexual minorities became sexual minorities.5

     1.   Pre-Stonewall
     The pre-Stonewall history of sexual minorityhood in this
country can be arranged into two basic eras.  The first is the
era of atomization, and covers the years before World War II,
during which sexual minorities did not yet exist as such.  The
second is the homophile era of the post-war years, during which a
sense of group consciousness and of physical community began to
form along the major cities of the East and West coast.  These
decades changed the world, and in doing so they set the stage for
the formation of today's sexual minorities.
     Before World War II, Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals by and
large were scattered across the towns and plains of the country,
isolated from each other and viewed by themselves and others as
individual "perverts" without any connection to any of bona fide
community.6  The recent spate of (auto)biographical accounts
from that era show how this social and intellectual vacuum kept
most Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals atomized, hidden, and
cowered.7  Thus, rather than comprising a group fortified
against the antagonism of the sexual majority by a sense of
itself, inchoate sexual minorities were viewed instead as
discreet sex/gender aberrations-- clinical cases and reviled
statistics.   =20
     However, World War II ushered in a new era because combat
conditions changed both the consciousness of a budding generation
as well as the broader socio-economic landscape.8  Joined
together for wartime efforts, men and women who intuitively or
secretly identified as "homosexual" found each other in the
ranks, and during those years forged both a sense of self as well
as tentative links with likeminded others, and these two gains
survived the war.9  In the home front, the nation's call for
women to come out of the home and to go work in the factories as
replacements for the men sent to war also brought together the
previously isolated homosexuals among them.10  In this way, the
nation's military needs during World War II served as the primary
catalyst for the congregation of homosexuals in relatively
concentrated places and numbers.
     Upon demobilization, these youths did not return to the
strictures of the towns, plains, and homes that previously
contained them.  Instead, they hung on to their newfound
freedoms.  Many former service members thus lingered and settled
in the great ports of disembarkation used by the military on each
coast while many wartime factory workers similarly lingered and
settled into job opportunities that provided economic
freedom.11  Thus, New York,12 Los Angeles, and San
Francisco13 became the hometowns of the nation's incipient
sexual minorities.14 =20
     In the west, Los Angeles and San Francisco witnessed some of
the earliest organized resistance to what we now call homophobia
after World War II.  This resistance led to the formation of the
Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis in conjunction
with similar stirrings on the other end of country in New York
City.15  Using the "homophile" self-denomination, these post-
War efforts were led initially by politically radical activists
but eventually settled into a calculated assimilationism that
marks these years as a relatively distinct era in the history of
sexual minorityhood.16  These early years were critical because
they introduced individuals to each other; building networks,
these pioneers broke the silence of the past and became the
progenitors of our future communities.
     This incremental creation of a group identity on both coasts
eventually coincided with the general tumult of the 1960s, which
gave rise to a social fecundity that helped to ignite a more
militant "Gay" consciousness.17  Perhaps most significantly, in
1969 events led up to the "Stonewall" riots when the patrons of
the Stonewall Inn, a bar in Greenwich Village-- mainly Puerto
Rican drag queens-- unexpectedly rebelled at the continuing
harassment and extortion of homosexual bars and patrons.18  For
several nights, fearsome rioting ensued.  In a flash, the news of
this unprecedented defiance electrified the likeminded across the
country, and introduced a new wave of youthful radicalism that
marks the next era in the modern history of sexual minorityhood.=20

     2.   Post-Stonewall
     The post-Stonewall years also can be arranged into two basic
eras that mark relatively distinct stages in the formation of=20
sexual minorityhood.  The first of these, during the 1970s, was
the era of activism and hedonism, which began in the immediate
wake of the Stonewall Riots.  The second of these, the era of
pandemic and resurgence, began with the onset of HIV and
continues today with the ascendancy of a strident but
sophisticated Queer consciousness forged directly from the
alienation, radicalization, and mobilization that has spread
through the survivors, their families of affinity, their
neighbors, and their friends.  These decades therefore lead up to
today's Queer consciousness sexual minorityhood.19
     The months and years immediately following the Stonewall
Riots witnessed the rise of bacchanalia and revelry in the Gay
bathhouses20 and Gay discotheques that sprung up in cities
across the country,21 as well as the rise of the Gay Liberation
Front, whose permissiveness of lifestyle and politics of
confrontation set it apart from the assimilationist moderations
of the homophile movement.22  During this time, the 1970s, the
Gay male community predominated23 and, though some of these
Gays cried, "Out of the closets and into the streets," many
others saw no urgency in that cry.24  This era thus may be seen
as one of acute flux between pleasure without politics and
between the politics of pleasure.25
     This third era in the modern history of sexual minorityhood
shut down as the onset of AIDS began to terrorize and devastate
formative Gay communities.  But terror and devastation soon
turned to bitterness and fury, and this profound change in the
attitudinal zeitgeist made way for the fourth and current era.=20
Beginning in the early 1980s, a new era-- the current one--
characterized by a new militancy was launched by a new generation
of activists that included Lesbians with increasing
prominence.26  Epitomized by ACT-UP and Queer Nation, this new
era thus far has produced a potent mix of pride, politics and
pleasure that has taken sexual minority consciousness beyond the
limits of the Gay years.  This new activism is acutely aware of
"sexual orientation" as a highly politicized construct and is
unapologetic in its indulgence of (homo)sexuality as pleasure
politics, or as political defiance to sexual and cultural
subordination.27  This palpable, exponential emergence of Queer
consciousness perhaps is the most starting result of the post-
Stonewall years in the United States, a result that has rippled
across the nation and that now has its parallels throughout the
world as well.28 =20
     To be sure, sexual minorityhood is recent, but nonetheless
authentic and secured.  Indeed, the 1990s generate daily examples
that show how sexual minorities in fact function as a "minority"
in every sense of the word: sexual minority communities include
identifiable neighborhoods with community-identified businesses,
community-oriented services and organizations, and community
interests and concerns that are viewed and addressed as such.29=20
These communities also have produced literature,30 art,31 and
entertainment.32  More significantly, these communities have
produced political leadership and leaders like Harvey Milk, Gerry
Studds, Roberta Achtenberg; these communities, in other words,
have produced a culture, a tribal sensibility that is discernible
even if not homogeneous.33  Thus, as a practical matter, a
minority culture defined by minority sexual orientation(s) has
come into existence and this sub-culture, delineated both by
consciousness and geography, is active in, if not central to,
civic and economic life in some of the nation's most prominent
cities.34 =20
     These changes could not help but to affect legal culture
because the law is a prime tool in the repression of sexual
minority life.35  The gains of sexual minorities since the
Stonewall Riots thus ensured that the repressive uses of law
would be questioned and challenged both from without and within
legal culture.  Consequently, the law's historical role in the
subordination of sexual minorities increasingly is being
contested.  The post-Stonewall advances thereby pose a basic
challenge to legal culture: creation of a scholarship that is
cognizant of and responsive to the new landscape.

B.   Naming and Situating the Missing Voice
     The social and political developments of the past quarter
century recounted above thus situate us at the threshold not only
of finding but also of naming this missing voice because naming
always has been uncertain and problematic for sexual minorities.
During the past century our most prominent sobriquets have
included homosexual, queer, dyke, Gay, Lesbian, Queer.  Each of
these terms comes with its past, its lineage, its baggage.  Thus,
naming the emergent legal scholarship on sexual minorities
unavoidably forces a choice that signals self-definition.
     As the preceding listing suggests, Queer is the latest of
terms for sexual minority identity.  It represents the most
recent culmination of self-made Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, trans-
gendered communities and identities.  Thus, though all the terms
speak to the past, only Queer also speaks as part of a new
vocabulary that invokes a self-made vision of a better future.=20
In this way, the history of sexual minorities effectively
crystallizes the choice that we face over self-denomination: we
either embrace or reject in legal culture the new, liberational
significance of "Queer" in the cultural life and discourse of
sexual minorities as a whole. =20
     I, for one, opt to cast my lot in favor of the Queer self-
denomination.  Not only is it self-made and forward-looking, this
term also increasingly connotes the advances secured by sexual
minorities socially and culturally in recent years; even though
it still can evoke the terrors of a not too distant past,36
Queer increasingly signifies self-empowerment.  Queer signifies a
sense of egalitarian inclusiveness that encompasses all sexual
minorities-- Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and the transgendered-- and
that therefore invites wide-ranging critiques of sex/gender
issues.  Queer legal theory thereby appropriately denotes a sense
of mission and scope that comports with the character of the
challenges that face sexual minorities.  Thus, Queer signifies an
activist sense of self that is useful and beneficial in the tasks
that face sexual minority legal scholars.   =20
     As envisioned here, Queer legal theory faces three basic
tasks.  The first task is to create a body of legal scholarship
that is responsive to Queer life and identity.  The second task
to make the law accountable for its actual impact on the lives
and fortunes of sexual minorities.  The final task is to join
with Feminism and Critical Race theory in the quest for
liberation from subordination under law.

     1.   Responsiveness and Accountability
     The first two tasks-- responsiveness and accountability-- go
hand in hand.  Fortunately, the attainment of sexual minorityhood
and the coherence of Queer consciousness in society at large has
occasioned an explosion of research among the social sciences
that can fuel Queer legal theory from the outset.37  The use of
knowledge charted by the law's sister disciplines can help Queer
legal theory make itself more responsive to its constituency by
facilitating the law's tracking of pioneering insights.  In this
way, Queer legal theory can help to illuminate the law's
ignorance or to check the law's malice, and thus help to make the
law both more responsive and accountable to sexual minorities. =20
     The continuing focus of Queer legal theory, as envisioned
here, therefore must be to incorporate explicitly and
determinedly the experiences of sexual minorities as sexual
minorities into the law's fabric at every level and in every
relevant context.  Only in this way may Queer legal theory inform
and reform a legal culture that is replete with neglect or
mistreatment.  However, Queer legal theory additionally must make
itself responsive and accountable as well; the scholarship must
begin and stay grounded to lived experience.  If this scholarship
is to speak for us with integrity, Queer legal theory must
represent the diversities and realities of sexual minority lives
in all that it does. =20

     2.   Joining Hands With Feminism and Critical Race Theory
     Though they constitute two principal tasks, responsiveness
and accountability are not, and cannot be, the entire work of
Queer legal theorists.  Thus, in addition to responsiveness and
accountability, Queer legal theory should and must consciously
situate itself among the liberationist schools of legal theory
that have sought in recent years to pry the law from its narrow
traditionalisms.  Both Feminism and Critical Race theory provide
natural role models and allies.  Ideally, the advent of Queer
legal theory thus should signal a gathering of critical insights
and perspectives based on two sources of commonality: a common
interest in social and legal equality and a historic and current
situational kinship.  The common interest in social and legal
equality is addressed in the two sections that follow below and
the situational kinship based on Psycho-Social Isolation is
considered afterwards.=20

          a.   Queers, Feminists & the Sex/Gender Self
          The additional task facing Queer legal theory, as
envisioned here, is to join with Feminist (and Critical Race)
theory in the quest for equality.  Perhaps the joinder with
Feminism seems more compelling at first blush because both women
and sexual minorities may be thought to have a special interest
in
dismantling the hetero-patriarchal regulation of human
sexualities.  In this sense, the joinder of Queer and Feminist
interests may be thought as being reflected in the Feminist
battle cries, "Your body is a battleground" and "The personal is
the political."  Indeed, our bodies and personalities are the
battleground on which the sex/gender politics over control of the
self are waged.  Indeed, viewed in a broader social-historical
context, the Feminist and Queer claims for control of our
sex/gender selves represents another increment in the development
of the "self" in Western legal culture.38 =20
     Hence, it is no coincidence that contemporary Feminist and
Queer agendas resemble each other: both seek an end to the
ideological occupation of our jobs, homes and hearts-- our
selves.  Likewise, it is no coincidence that Feminist and Queer
progress is opposed by common adversaries: traditionalist forces
that oppose sex/gender equality and that argue for a "return" to
"traditional values" (by which they mean a return to heightened
societal control over bodies, personalities, desires, and
aspirations) are the main adversaries both of Feminists and of
Queers.  In the courtrooms, legislatures, and streets of the
land, women and sexual minorities spook the same forces because
we pursue the same sex/gender goals; in both instances the
pursuit of equality is clashing with the traditions of hetero-
patriarchy.39
     Feminist and Queer goals thus invite critical collaborations
toward the accomplishment of sex/gender equality.  However,
collaboration depends on mutuality.  And, therefore, Feminism
must reciprocate.  To do so, Feminism must overcome its history
of neglect regarding sexual orientation issues within its
critiques of sex and gender.40  In other words, like Queer
legal theory, Feminist legal theory must learn to recognize and
to address the commonalities of our sex/gender oppressions and of
our social and legal interests in modern culture.41
     This joining, moreover, extends beyond the direct scope of
sex/gender oppressions that unify the interests of women and of
sexual minorities under hetero-patriarchy.  This joining properly
extends to the remediation of inequality more generally because
the three forms of oppression that confront us respectively--
heterosexism, androsexism, and racism-- are inter-linked.42=20
The joining urged here therefore extends to Critical Race theory
as well.
    =20
          b.   Critical Race Theory, Multiplicity & Intersectionality
          Though it focuses on issues especially relevant to race
and ethnicity, Critical Race theory, like Feminism and Queer
legal theory, is devoted to the eradication of subordination
under the law.  Thus, it bears emphasis that solidarity between
and among liberationist critical legal theories need not, nor
should be, limited to sex/gender issues; though humans inhabit
categories built on these problematized traits, humans also
inhabit categories built on class, race, color or ethnicity, as
well as other problematized traits.  These traits all count in
the calculus of privilege and discrimination because society and
its legal system fawn or bite on these bases.
     The advent of a Queer/Feminist collaboration therefore
should signal a new, sustained alertness to this "layering"-- the
stacking of bigotries in layers that reflect the intersections of
target problematized traits like race, religion, ethnicity,
class, sex/gender, sexual orientation, and others.  The path
toward this sustained alertness already has been pioneered by the
recent works of Feminist Critical Race legal scholars who have
illuminated notions of multiplicity and intersectionality. =20
Multiplicity recognizes that human identity "is multiplicitous,
not unitary" and that, therefore, "differences are always
relational rather than inherent."43  Intersectionality in turn
recognizes this "multi-dimensionality" to show that subordination
does not operate on a "single-axis framework" and to emphasize
that critical legal theories therefore must recognize and
confront the "complexities of compoundedness" in the fight
against social and legal inequalities.44  These voices,
bridging the gap between race and sex and between Feminism and
Critical Race theory thus have pointed the way to a further
joining that includes sexual orientation issues and Queer
critiques in a common critical front.
     Consider for a moment the Lesbian of color.  Under a
heterosexist, androsexist, racist socio-legal regime, her
multiplicity adds up to a highly problematized identity based on
sexual orientation, sex, and race.  Because she is, all at once,
a prime target for racial, androsexist, and heterosexist
bigotries that rage throughout American society, she embodies the
intersection of traits and bigotries that overlap the apparent
domains of Queer legal theory, of Feminism, and of Critical Race
theory.  The Lesbian of color thus personifies the overlapping
constituencies and interests of Queer legal theory, Feminism, and
Critical Race theory.  None of these critical legal theories
could hope ever to represent her, or to address the interlocking
isms that shape her (and our) subordination(s), if they limit
themselves to a single-axis or even a dual-axis critical
framework.  Clearly, then, a Queer/Feminist collaboration must
make the layered impacts of race, color, class, and other
problematized traits organic to its critiques. =20
     Beyond that, however, Critical Race theory likewise must
join Queer/Feminist scholarship to illuminate the historic and
contemporary intersectionality of race, sex, and sexual
orientation in social and legal arenas.  To do so, Critical Race
theory, like Feminism, also must reciprocate by ending the
neglect or omission of sexual orientation from its discussion of
racial and ethnic legal issues.  This type of effort already is
underway beyond the law, as Gay and Lesbian people of color have
begun to expose the racism (and androsexism) of sexual minorities
as well as the homophobia of racial minorities.  For instance,
one Latina Lesbian recounted recently how, as a young activist in
New =19ork City during 1979-80, she "was shocked into realizing
that the lesbian and gay community is just about as sexist,
racist and homophobic as the straight community."45  At the
same time, Gay males of color also have begun to explore our
internalization of this homophobia of color.46  As these two
examples illustrate, people of color in sexual minority
communities-- or should we be called sexual minorities in
communities of color?-- are beginning to build a discourse and a
consciousness that over time can help to calm the personal and
group divisions engendered by the respective prejudices of our
brothers and sisters.47
     Though barely discernible, this type of effort is underway
within legal culture as well.  For instance, articles with a
race-identified perspective slowly but surely are beginning to
note sexual orientation issues.48  Perhaps reflecting this
increasing awareness, the 1994 Critical Race Theory Workshop
devoted one plenary session (of three) to the intersection of
race and sexual orientation.49  Though the examples from legal
culture are relatively few, their recent vintage and growing
prominence indicates an expanding recognition of
intersectionality and multiplicity that in time may yield a sense
of commonality between women, sexual minorities, and racial
minorities. =20
     If so, these examples may one day stand as a beginning point
for mutual collaborations that will deepen and broaden the
continuum of experience and insight from which all of us may draw
liberating legal principles.  If so, these collaborations may
allow us to put together the building blocks of a broad-based
theory of subordination and liberation.50  At the very least,
a mutual cultivation of common knowledge and experience can
delineate the contours of our cultural consanguinity.  Thus,
Queer/Feminist/Critical Race legal critiques must adopt and
fulfill an exacting standard of inclusiveness against which
liberational legal scholarship always must measure itself.  =20
     Thus, while striving to air marginalized voices, Queer legal
theory, like Feminism and Critical Race theory, must resist
homogenizing the experience of all sexual minorities into an
essentialized singleness.  The insights afforded by "multiple
consciousness" permit the acknowledgment that no gain is achieved
by obscuring difference.51  Law operates on multiple levels,
and touches us in varying ways depending on where we're standing
in relationship to it at any given moment.  So, while forging a
common cause with Feminism and Critical Race theory to face
common challenges and common legacies, Queer legal theory must
also define and address difference and diversity.

C.   Social Constructionism & Queer Legal Theory
     The time is auspicious for the initiation of Queer Legal
Theory for another reason.  During the past decade or so, the
law's sister disciplines have been developing a critical theory
that today is a powerful tool available for importation into and
application within legal culture.  This critical theory, known as
social constructionism, is a powerful critical tool, both outside
of and within legal culture, because it's basic point advances a
fundamental insight: that the human condition is a social
construction, and not a "natural" or necessary condition.52
     Generally, social constructionism challenges the notion of
an "essential" or inherent reality, and thereby it questions the
validity of the status quo as a set of conditions that can be
justified as such.  Instead, social constructionism focuses on
the way in which conditions or circumstances thought to be "just
so" are in fact arranged by socially dominant forces.  By
reminding us at all times that the status quo is a humanly
constructed reality, social constructionism reminds us that the
status quo cannot make claim to inherent value or legitimacy. =20
     This reminder is critical to the emancipation of sexual
minorities, women, and people of color because it rejects the
premise for existing cultural hierarchies.  Those hierarchies, as
we saw above, are premised on notions of inherent inferiority
that dominant forces have imputed to traditionally disfavored
groups.53  Thus, social constructionism invites sexual
minorities, women, and people of color critically to re-examine
any deference accorded to the status quo based on its ostensible
representation of a natural state of affairs, and to imagine
alternatives that perhaps might have been thought beyond the
pale.  Queer legal theory therefore must embrace and deploy this
knowledge to help mount its challenge of the hetero-patriarchal
status quo.


D.   Lesbians, Gay Androsexism & Queer Legal Theory
     Finally, Queer legal theory must confront a danger that
could undermine its integrity, a danger that already has been
identified as a reason to eschew Queer legal theory in favor of=20
more specific versions of this enterprise.54  This danger is
that Gay male androsexism will marginalize Lesbian voices,
experience, and interests in the same way that androsexism more
generally has subordinated the female to the male.  This danger
thus anticipates that the inclusiveness and expansiveness of
Queer legal theory will operate to overwhelm the participation
and influence in this enterprise of at least one sub-set of
persons within the broader category of sexual minorities. =20
     Sex/gender history and experience shows that these dangers
are real and that such wariness is well-founded.  But these
concerns should not foreclose a Lesbian and Gay male Queer
collaboration because that approach would narrow unduly the base
of experience from which Queer insights would be drawn and thus
would preclude possibilities for joint empowerment that are too
valuable to forego.  Queer legal theory is a must precisely
because it can help to bridge the reality and the perception of
difference among and between various sexual minority sub-sets.=20
The inclusiveness and expansiveness of Queer legal theory, as
imagined here, goes beyond the specificity of critiques anchored
to one or another sexual minority sub-set, a specificity that
does not lend itself well to connective projects.  Thus, though
the inward or singular focus of such critiques may project a
particular viewpoint with special force or insight, they are less
likely than inclusive Queer critiques to help cultivate
connectivity as a strategy toward sex/gender equality. =20
     Moreover, the narrowness of focus in a Lesbian-specific (or,
for that matter, a Gay male-specific) legal theory may engender a
kind of incompleteness similar to the limitations of critiques
that ignore multiplicity and intersectionality.  In other words,
while a focused viewpoint may voice with clarity a singular
perspective it also may limit the peripheral vision of that
viewpoint.  Specific legal theories therefore are more likely to
overlook sex/gender commonalities than would a self-consciously
inclusive Queer critique.  An inclusive Queer legal theory
therefore is uniquely positioned to promote expansive critical
insights into the various species of interlocking isms that keep
women and sexual minorities down.
     At the same time, Queer legal theory cannot and should not
be thought to deny room for, or to obviate the usefulness of,
Lesbian-specific or other similarly focused critiques.  Room and
use exists for both because the two types of critiques can help
to fuel each other and, in tandem, can help chip away at the
heterosexist domination of legal culture and legal doctrine.  The
primary point urged here is that this type of specific critique
should not deemed to deny or obviate Queer critiques because
Queer inclusiveness and expansiveness can add dimensions that, by
definition, are more likely to be missing from the more specific
efforts; Lesbian legal theory can (co)exist with(in) Queer legal
theory, but cannot substitute for it.
     Thus, in the final analysis, the concern over Gay
androsexism and the danger that it poses for Queer legal theory
should serve to heighten our individual and collective vigilance
against the potential for a wholesale or creeping influence of
androsexism within Queer critiques.  By definition the term Queer
reflects and invokes this type of heightened awareness for
sex/gender egalitarianism and against sex/gender imperialism.=20
The key, then, is to live up to the standards of the term.=20
Additionally, this type of heightened awareness is integral to
the broader commitment of Queer legal theory to connectivity.=20
The challenge, then, is to fulfill the ideals of this commitment.

Because it counters the tradition of male supremacy that has run
through Western history, this heightened vigilance may not come
easily, but it also is not impossible.   =20

                               II.
                    CONNECTIVITY & COALITION
     The preceding sections attempt to explain why Queer legal
theory, Feminism and Critical Race theory ought mutually to join
hands in recognition of overlapping constituencies and interests.

However, this joinder is warranted by more than this overlapping.
The situational kinship mentioned earlier, based on historical
circumstances, also points sexual minorities, women, and racial
minorities toward each other.  This situational kinship results
from inter-locking subordinations based on sexuality/sexual
orientation, sex/gender, and race/ethnicity that consequently
bestow on sexual minorities, women, and people of color a latent
sense of cultural connectivity, or capacity for cultural
connection, that we need to awaken, foster, and deploy toward the
common aim of social and legal equality.  More specifically, this
kinship results from the uses of similar strategies to impose and
sustain heterosexist, androsexist, and racist biases in law and
society.  Calling this strategy Psycho-Social Isolation, this
section therefore urges that Queer legal theory should and must
pursue and occasion an active sense connectivity and
interconnection.

A.   Connectivity Defined
     I first encountered the term "connectivity" a few years ago
while leafing through computer journals in order to make a
decision about which computer I ought to purchase.  The term, I
learned at that time, signified the "capacity for connection" of
a computer component to another component in order to expand or
magnify the power of both.  However, this concept also
contemplates the interconnection of multiple components in a
"network of networks" that is open, interactive, flexible, and
adaptable to various applications.55  Thus, connectivity and
interconnection signify the active linkage of individuals to form
networks and the active linkage of such networks to form a
network of networks.
     Since then, I have come to realize that this technical term
in fact has a much more important potential application to the
broader cultural context in which we live today.  In fact, since
then I have come to realize that the term captures precisely a
point that I consider fundamental to the empowerment of
traditionally disfavored groups in American law and society: that
people of color, women, and sexual minorities not only should,
but must, come together as individuals, as groups, and as
networks of groups to realize and activate our mutual
connectivities based on our cultural commonalities.  Perhaps the
most basic level of cultural commonality is the construction of
people of color, women, and sexual minorities as the Other.
     People of color, women, and sexual minorities have a
tremendous, if relatively latent, capacity for connection based
on the past, the present, and the future that we share, or have
shared, as Others within America.  People of color, women, and
sexual minorities thus share a common past of arbitrary exclusion
and subordination.  People of color, women, and sexual minorities
also share a common present in our struggles against the legacy
of the past, a legacy that still envelopes and suffocates us
today.  Finally, people of color, women, and sexual minorities
share a common vision of a future in which our quests for
empowerment and equality will have been realized.  To elaborate
substantively this concept of situational kinship or cultural
connectivity, the sections below begin with the commonality of
our past and its continuing repercussions today, and then touch
on the significance of difference to the realization of
connectivity in our present, and finally move to the commonality
of our vision and march toward a future based on empowerment and
equality.

B.   Psycho-Social Isolation & Connectivity
     Beginning with the past and its continuing repercussions, I
would like to focus on a unified account of a common history and
a common present shared by people of color, women, and sexual
minorities.  To anchor a unified account that brings to the
surface our cultural connectivities, we must focus on the common
denominator, or strategy, that has given shape and still drives
our historical disempowerments and subordinations.  I call this
common denominator, or strategy, "Psycho-Social Isolation"
because this strategy has been, and is, targeted at all of us
both as individuals and as members of traditionally disfavored
groups.  In other words, Psycho-Social Isolation is calculated to
disable us both internally, or psychologically, and externally,
or socially, so that we never learn who we are, who we can be.=20
Psycho-Social Isolation is targeted at us both within ourselves
and outside of ourselves, it is intended to obscure us from our
own selves, from others like us, and also from the social
mainstream.  And thus, Psycho-Social Isolation keeps us inchoate,
both as individuals and as communities.56

     1.   Connectivity & the Past
     For people of color, Psycho-Social Isolation has been and
still is implemented through confinement to the ghetto.=20
Historically, ghettos were defined by stark geographic
boundaries, and were differentiated from society at large in very
visible and concrete ways.57  Herded into these ghettos were
the humans that dominant social forces defined as inferior by
nature and indelibly rendered so merely by coloring.58  Of
course, this Psycho-Social Isolation was enforced by law for most
of the nation's history.  Monuments to this history include Dred
Scott v. Sandford,59 Plessy v. Ferguson,60 and Korematsu v.
United States.61  Indeed, some of the nation's greatest
upheavals, including the Civil War, have stemmed from the Psycho-
Social Isolation of people of color.
     Today, even though the support of the law supposedly has
been withdrawn, such ghettos continue to exist.  However, the
ghetto now extends beyond stark physical constructs and includes
forms of confinement that, though shaded more subtly, are just as
constricting.  These new forms of quasi-covert racism have taken
their places alongside the traditional ghetto and have yielded a
"permanent underclass."62  Now, both overt and covert acts of
ghettoization support the continuing Psycho-Social Isolation of
people of color both as individuals and as a group. =20
     Consider, for instance, tokenism which exaggerates small
gains or concessions to create the illusion of real or
substantial improvement.  Tokenism in the social, political and
economic systems of the country simply create small pockets-- or
ghettos-- of people of color within certain sectors of social,
political, and economic mainstreams.63  In this way, the
ghettoization of people of color remains intact, even though
physically we may have transcended historical limitations and
even though ostensibly we have entered into the nation's social
or economic mainstreams.  Thus, in a metaphorical as well as a
literal sense, tokenism is the new ghetto: the rise of the
"permanent underclass" shows how tokenism works as the new ghetto
by keeping people of color concentrated at "the bottom" of
social, political, and economic life, and thus relatively
controlled, disempowered, and impoverished.  Consequently,
tokenism is both an illusion and an excuse that serves the
modern-day purposes of Psycho-Social Isolation: it creates an
illusion of progress while keeping people of color isolated, and
creates an excuse for the waning of efforts to combat the
vestiges of the past.64    =20
     For women, Psycho-Social Isolation has been and continues to
be implemented through confinement to the home.  Historically,
socially dominant forces carved up human existence into so-called
"private" and "public" spheres.65  The woman, also defined as
inferior by nature, was relegated to the  home, the "private"
sphere of human existence that made and kept women sealed off
from the rest of human discourse.  As with people of color, the
Psycho-Social Isolation of women also has been enforced by law
throughout most of the nation's history.66  Once again,
therefore, the monuments to this past are to be found in the
nation's law books.  Monuments to this history include Bradwell
v. Illinois,67 Goesaert v. Cleary,68 and Hoyt v. Florida.69=20
Thus, the history of sex relations in this country, like the
history of race relations, has been a history of domination and
subordination, of power for the dominant and isolation for the
subordinated.
     Today, women have managed to slip through the physical
demarcations of the private/public dichotomy but women, like
people of color, continue to be weighed down by new and more
subtle forms of androsexism.  The notorious "glass ceiling" and
the so-called "mommy-track," for instance, tend to shunt women to
the sidelines of social and economic mainstreams.70 In
practice, these two devices help to justify different treatments
of women in the workplace and help to excuse the perpetuation of
customs and practices that undermine the independence and
equality of working women individually and collectively.71=20
Though purportedly on equal footing in the workplace, cultural
pressures and preferences thus exert a strong pull back into the
traditional roles and strictures of the home even for the most
determined and savvy women.
     For sexual minorities, Psycho-Social Isolation has been and
continues to be implemented through confinement to the Closet.=20
Though the Closet, unlike the ghetto and the home, is not a
physical construct, its boundaries and limitations were and are
just as real and, in lived experience, just as tangible as
well.72  Defined by dominant social forces as inferior or
defective by nature, Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and the trans-
gendered, like people of color and women, were driven away from
personal and professional opportunities and into a paralyzing
sense of self-doubt, a fear of all and a loathing of self.73=20
For those who resisted the Closet, forcible institutionalization
or worse awaited.74  Once again, the law has stood by to
enforce the Psycho-Social Isolation of a disfavored and
vulnerable group.
     Though sexual minorities, like people of color and women,
have begun to emerge from our traditional confines, the Closet
continues to be the means through which society insists on=20
marginalizing its Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and trans-gendered
members.  The recent brouhaha over sexual minorities in the
military is a poignant and Orwellian reminder of the Closet's
potency: while recognizing formally the existence and
contributions of sexual minorities in military life, dominant
social forces nonetheless have insisted on erasing the existence
and significance of this entire class of persons and, more
insidiously, have insisted on punishing any objection or
resistance to this blanket erasure.75  "Popular" initiatives
such as Oregon's anti-Gay initiative76 and Colorado's notorious
Amendment Two77 likewise seek to keep sexual minorities
excluded and marginalized.  Perhaps the most notorious legal
monument to this history is Bowers v. Hardwick, in which the
Court applauded the repression of same-sex love simply on the
presumed belief that the majority disliked sexual minorities.78=20
So, as with people of color and women, exclusion,
marginalization, and subordination continues to be the rule, the
reality.  For each group, Psycho-Social Isolation continues to be
the weapon of oppression.

     2.   Connectivity & the Present
     Turning to the present, our attention must focus on a=20
question that can determine the measure of our success, or our
failure.  This question is the accommodation of "difference" and
diversity within and among us.  Of course, much has been said and
written about "difference" and diversity during the past few
years and, at times, real or imagined difference has threatened
to fracture cooperative efforts toward empowerment and
equality.79  These are real tensions, but they are not
conclusive.  Of course, we must air our tensions by talking with,
not at, each other, and we also must open our ears and minds so
that we not only listen but also hear the message of the words.=20
Otherwise, we run of risk of reducing ourselves to the type of
closed-mindedness that we all rail against. =20
     At the outset, we must all recognize that the experience of
confinement to the ghetto, to the home, and to the Closet, are
not necessarily identical to each other.  Indeed, no one Closet
is necessarily identical to another.  Nor is the experience of
life within a ghetto identical among its inhabitants.  Nor is the
experience of every woman in her home the same.  But each and
every one of these experiences is about exclusion and erasure:
exclusion and erasure are the central and common features for the
experience of subordination based on race/ethnicity, sex/gender,
and sexuality/sexual orientation.  We must recognize that, within
this range of common experience, there is no hierarchy of horror
or suffering.  On the contrary: the horrors of oppression afflict
us all.  This commonality should be a base of empathy from which
to build affinity, and not a field of competing, divisive, self-
defeating claims to greater measures of pain and suffering.=20
     The challenge, then, is to animate our fundamental
connectivity based on common experience without ignoring or
denying real and relevant difference.  Personally, I am an
optimist on this score because I do not take a narrow view of
connectivity, nor of my fellow humans.  I have seen connectivity
work.80  I have seen tension transformed into harmony, and
potential failure thereby turned into unprecedented success.81=20
In these contexts, I have seen that difference, whether real or
imagined, is something that we can transcend, and even
affirmatively celebrate, as we undergo the process of building
understanding and affinity.  Difference, after all, is another
word for diversity, and we profess to value diversity.  We must
come to appreciate that difference is what textures our
experiential and situational connectivity.
     The bottom line I urge is this: difference is not an
obstacle to affinity.  On the contrary, the accommodation of
difference within an overarching consciousness of connectivity
enables all of us-- people of color, women, and sexual
minorities-- to make sure that we in fact dismantle in every
respect the historic monopoly of consciousness that has
disempowered and subordinated us all.  By learning from each
other the details and nuances of our respective subordinations we
can reveal to each other the full range of the system that keeps
us all down.  In this way, we can make sure that we jointly
combat Psycho-Social Isolation in all its aspects or facets, even
those against which we have not personally brushed up or those
which our respective experiences do not enable us to comprehend
personally.  By using our commonalties and our differences to
confront and challenge Psycho-Social Isolation broadly and
effectively, we increase our respective as well as our collective
prospects of overcoming the shared legacy of our common past.
     Thus, connectivity does not suggest that people of color,
women, and sexual minorities in each instance are situated
identically, or that Feminist, Critical Race, or Queer
scholarship must abide by some sort of "equal time" rule that
might disallow concentration on one issue or another.  Instead,
connectivity suggests that all our respective inquiries would
yield a higher grade of insight if informed by a broader base of
experience and if guided by a sense of shared experience.  In
sum, connectivity denotes synthesis and synergy; it does not
imply homogenization.  Ultimately, then the fear we need to
harbor about difference is its exploitation or exaggeration. =20
    =20
     3.   Connectivity & the Future
     And so, finally, I turn to connectivity and our common
vision of a future that takes us beyond Psycho-Social Isolation.
The path toward this future, of course, is based on an
understanding that the purposes and effects of Psycho-Social
Isolation were and are identical for each group.  In each
instance, the first objective of Psycho-Social Isolation was and
is ignorance.  In each instance the second objective was and is
invisibility.  The two work in tandem to rationalize racist,
androsexist, heterosexist domination.  This rationalization, when
internalized by people of color, women, and sexual minorities,
serves to demoralize and demobilize us.  Thus, ignorance,
invisibility, and internalization in combination are the purposes
and effects of Psycho-Social Isolation.
     Psycho-Social Isolation was and is calculated to make and to
keep us ignorant by making and keeping us atomized, separated
from our kind, our tribes.  Psycho-Social Isolation thus makes
and keeps us ignorant of our selves-- of who we are-- and also of
others like us.  Psycho-Social Isolation additionally was and is
calculated to make and to keep us invisible.  Psycho-Social
isolation invisiblizes us so that we remain hidden from each
other, and from the social and economic mainstreams as well.=20
Psycho-social Isolation thus subverts our capacity for group
identity and distances us from the power centers of society.=20
Thus, ignorance keeps us invisible, and invisibility keeps us
ignorant.
     Ultimately, Psycho-Social Isolation was and is calculated to
establish a belief in white, male, heterosexual supremacy and,
conversely, to instill a sense of inherent inferiority among
people of color, women, and sexual minorities.  Psycho-Social
Isolation, as such, is a project of internalization that uses
ignorance and invisibility as its tools.  Through our
internalization of inherent inferiority, dominant social forces
cow us, and thus secure our acquiescence to our own
disempowerment and our own subordination.  Psycho-Social
Isolation effectively keeps people of color, women, and sexual
minorities from realizing our worth, our capacity, our power, and
our potential both as individuals and as communities.  Psycho-
Social Isolation ultimately keeps us from realizing our
connectivity.
     At its core, then, the Psycho-Social Isolation strategy,
whether implemented through confinement to the ghetto, the home,
or the Closet, is an exercise in the monopolization of
consciousness.  Psycho-Social Isolation is an example of the
"divide and conquer" strategy.  It is the manipulation of power
to serve the few at the expense of the many.  Each of us, whether
as people of color, as women, and/or as members of sexual
minorities, are struggling to break up this historic monopoly and
manipulation of consciousness and power, and to break out of our
respective confinements.  Each of us is trying to come out and
step up: to realize ourselves, both as individuals and as
communities, to realize empowerment and equality, both personally
and collectively.
     Accordingly, Feminist, Critical Race, or Queer scholarship
sensitive to connectivity would be singularly equipped to subject
racist, sexist and heterosexist legal emplacements to a critical
examination of their significance to people of color, women and
sexual minorities.  The depth and scope of a unified critique
could strengthen its incisiveness.  Such a synthesis could amount
to synergy.  =20

C.   A Note on Coalition & Connectivity
     The concept and rhetoric of coalition-building is not a
novelty to our communities.  However, connectivity and coalition
do not denote precisely the same things, though the two of course
are quite related.  Connectivity, as I have tried to elaborate,
denotes an active and personal linkage of consciousness.  It is a
personal awakening to the commonalties that situate and have
situated people of color, women, and sexual minorities in similar
riptides of social discrimination and legal oppression.=20
Connectivity is about understanding the ways in which each of our
lives is prodded by dominant social and legal forces to follow
common scripts of denial and denigration. =20
     Coalition-building, on the other hand, denotes a strategic
combining of forces in order to take collective actions or to
effectuate coordinated plans.  In this sense, coalition-building
is about group tactics, rather than personal awakenings.  But, I
hope it is self-evident that connectivity precedes and
facilitates coalition-building.  By understanding our
connectivity we pave the road for our coalition-building and also
begin to appreciate the need for, and urgency of, coalition-
building with our situational kin.82 =20
     Not surprisingly, I favor both connectivity and coalition.=20
I think and I know that they go hand-in-hand.  And so, though
this essay focuses on connectivity (because it is the less-
discussed subject of the two), I hope that a heightened sense of
our commonalities will strengthen our sense of solidarity, and
our coalition-building efforts.  In turn, I hope that a
strengthening of our solidarity and coalition-building efforts
will enhance the durability and the effectiveness of our
coalitions.  In this way, each of us, as individuals and as
members of our diverse and overlapping communities, can hasten
the time when people of color, women, and sexual minorities will
replace disempowerment and subordination with empowerment and
equality, not just in theory, not just on the books, but in fact,
in lived experience.

                              III.     =20
                       A PERSONAL EPILOGUE
     If my personal discussions are any barometer of the broader
legal landscape, the theoretical undertakings proposed here may
raise an eyebrow or two.  If serious discourse is thereby
generated, all the better.  To that end, I note the three
clusters of skepticism that informal discussions leading up to
this essay have pointed out. =20

A.   Left-handed, Bald-headed Golfers =A0the Law
     The threshold skepticism questions the propriety or
viability of Queer legal theory altogether: what's next, a theory
for left-handed, bald-headed golfers?83  The retort is
relatively simple: any classification that dominant social forces
concoct to stigmatize systematically the individuals pushed into
them is worthy of critical re-examination.  Fittingly, that re-
examination should be as sweeping as the discrimination that it
addresses.  This standard follows from the guarantee that
American society formally issues to all-- "equal justice under
law."84  Applied to the Queer category, this standard shows
abundant justification for the proposed venture.85  Whether
other categories hypothesized by active imaginations also satisfy
this standard is a question that, though interesting, frankly
does not address this venture's value.

B.   The Consciousness Curve
     The second skepticism questions the practicality animating a
sense of connectivity among and between women, sexual minorities
and people of color.  Is the notion utopian?  Perhaps, but I
think not: converging interests invite us in that direction.  In
fact, recent events indicate that an increasingly greater number
of persons are beginning to recognize the social realities that
undergird my arguments and aspirations.86  Though we cannot
foretell where today will lead, the consciousness curve favors
connectivity. =20

C.   My Selves, My Kinds=20
     Finally, the third skepticism wonders whether my optimism
amounts to naivete.  Perhaps it does, but I think not.  Time will
tell.  If it is so, I can only hope that this optimism proves
infectious: as a Gay Latino male, mutually exclusive affinities
are unthinkable.  I have no choice but to establish the
connections that cohere my persona and my communities.=20
Race/ethnicity, sex/gender, and sexuality/sexual orientation work
in tandem to construct my self in ways that a blindsided
mainstream cannot (nor cares to) fathom, and that I have yet to
master.  In the end, I do know one thing: my multiplicity is my
contribution to coalition through connectivity.  To others out
there like me, though different from me, I invite dialogue and
reciprocation.
  =20
                           Conclusion
     The events of the past twenty-five years, and their impact
on legal culture, have set the stage for the emergence of Queer
legal theory.  Sooner or later, and it ought to be sooner rather
than later, Queer legal theory must take its place among, and
make its contributions to, liberationist legal scholarship if the
law is to become informed and reformed regarding sexual
minorityhood, and if the law is to be responsive and accountable
to sexual minorities.  However, the advent of Queer legal theory
should not simply expand the law's horizons regarding sexual
minorities, though this expansion is much needed and long overdue
in order to make the law responsive and accountable to Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual, and trans-gendered issues.  Instead, the advent of
Queer legal theory also should occasion an opportunity to
discover the connectivity that people of color, women, and sexual
minorities all share with and among each other.  This sense of
connectivity denotes a personal recognition of the past, present,
and future commonalties that shape Critical Race, Feminist, and
Queer quests and perspectives.  This sense of connectivity also
includes a celebration of our diversity based on the
multiplicities that constitute us as layered individuals and as
overlapping cross-communities.  In sum, the advent of Queer legal
theory must inform legal culture about sexual minorities, and
should aid the accommodation and affirmation of difference and
diversity within an overarching consciousness of connectivity,

1.   Associate Professor of Law, California Western
School of Law.  J.S.D. Stanford Law School 1994; J.S.M.
Stanford Law School 1991; J.D. cum laude University of
Florida College of Law 1984; B.A. University of
California-Berkeley 1978.  This essay is based in part
on a talk delivered at the 1993 California Statewide
Minority Attorneys' Conference in San Francisco on
September 11, 1993.  My thanks go Lawrence Friedman and
Paul Brest, who extended the earliest validation of my
interest in the creation of Queer legal theory.  My
thanks go as well to Bob Weisberg, Barbara Fried,
Angela Harris, Judy McKelvey, Lynne Henderson, Marnie
Mahoney, Joan Mahoney, Marc Fajer, Mary Coombs, and
Barb Cox for lending their ear and support at critical
times.

2.   As used in this essay, "sexual minorities"
primarily refers to Lesbians, Gay men, and Bisexuals,
but also includes the transgendered, which principally
means transsexuals and transvestites.

3.   As described below, the term principally signifies
two concepts.  First, Queer connotes a sense of
inclusiveness and egalitarianism because it groups
together Lesbians, Gay males, Bisexuals and the
trans-gendered.  Second, Queer denotes a sense of
radicalism in the fight against sex/gender
subordination because it symbolizes an assertive
self-identity.  By using the term here, the essay
consciously seeks to invoke both concepts. See also
JUDITH BUTLER, BODIES THAT MATTER: ON THE DISCURSIVE
LIMITS OF "SEX" 223-42 (1993)  (discussing the
theoretics of the term).

4.   For a current history of the Stonewall Riots, see
MARTIN DUBERMAN, STONEWALL (1993).

5.   The best account of this process is JOHN D'EMILIO,
SEXUAL POLITICS, SEXUAL COMMUNITIES: THE MAKING OF A
HOMOSEXUAL MINORITY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1940-1970
(1983) hereinafter COMMUNITIES. A companion book of
essays amplifies this account.  See JOHN D'EMILIO,
MAKING TROUBLE: ESSAYS ON GAY HISTORY, POLITICS, AND
THE UNIVERSITY (1992), hereinafter TROUBLE.

6.   D'EMILIO, COMMUNITIES, supra note 5 at 9-22.  See
also ANDREA WEISS & GRETA SCHILLER, BEFORE STONEWALL:
THE MAKING OF A GAY AND LESBIAN COMMUNITY (1988).

7.   See, e.q., ERIC MARCUS, MAKING HISTORY: THE
STRUGGLE FOR GAY AND LESBIAN EQUAL RIGHTS, 1~45-1990--
AN ORAL HISTORY (1992).

8.   D'EMILIO, COMMUNITIES, supra note 5 at 23-39.

9.   D'EMILIO, COMMUNITIES, supra note 5 at 24-28.

10.  Id. at 29-31.

11.  Id. at 31-33.

12.  The New York story is told in D'EMILIO,
COMMUNITIES, supra note 5 at 149-75.

13.  The San Francisco story is told in D'EMILIO,
COMMUNITIES, supra note 5 at 176-95.

14.  But these pioneering activists had to fight
fiercely to make new hometowns for themselves within
the nation's urban centers because the cities did not
cheerfully welcome these newcomers. See, e.q.,
Project, The Consentinq Adult Homosexual and the Law:
An Empirical Study of Enforcement and Administration
in Los Angeles County, 13 U.C.L.A. L. REV. 643 (1966);
Steven A. Rosen, Police Harassment of Homosexual Women
and Men in New York City, 1960-1980, 12 COLUM. HUMAN
RTS. L. REV. 159 (1980-81).  Today, Gays and Lesbians
are fanning out into more rural areas and oftentimes
find themselves receiving the same lack of welcome.
E.q., Mississippi Burning: Lesbians and Intolerance in
a Small Town, TIME, Dec. 20, 1993, at 33 (reporting
the campaign of harassment, including nighttime
shotgun blasts, mounted in 1993 by the residents of
Ovid, Mississippi to drive out of town a women's
retreat run by Lesbians).

15.  D'EMILIO, COMMUNITIES, supra note 5 at 75-91.

16.  See D'EMILIO, TROUBLE, supra note 5 at 237-39.

17.   See D'EMILIO, COMMUNITIES, supra note 5 at
223-31.

18.  D'EMILIO, COMMUNITIES, supra note 5 at 231-33.=20
D'EMILIO, TROUBLE, supra note 5 at 239-41.

19.  The account of this process, as it occurred in
San Francisco specifically, is set forth in D'EMILIO,
TROUBLE, supra note 5 at 74-95.

20.  See Arthur Bell, The Bath Life Gets
Respectability ln LAVENDER CULTURE 77 (Karla Jay =8D
Allen Young eds. 1978) (describing both the delights
and the grimness of life in the baths of New York
City).

21.  The intensity of this first wave of sexual
exuberance is captured in JOHN RECHY, SEXUAL OUTLAW: A
DOCUMENTARY (rev. ed. 1984)  (depicting the
promiscuous "sexhunts" of those years).

22.  D'EMILIO, TROUBLE, supra note 5 at 242-46.

23.  D'EMILIO, TROUBLE, supra note 5 at 246, 251-56.

24.  See generally Allen Young, Out of the Closets,
Into the Streets, ln OUT OF THE CLOSET: VOICES OF GAY
LIBERATION 6 (Karla Jay & Allen Young eds. 1977)

25.  "After all, sexual liberation meant doing what
felt good, without guilt or shame, even though society
believed otherwise." Bell, supra note 20 at 81.

26.  D'EMILIO, TROUBLE, supra note 5 at 262-68.

27.  See FRANK BROWNING, THE CULTURE OF DESIRE: PARADOX
AND PERVERSITY IN GAY LIVES TODAY 26-54 (1993)=20
(describing "Queer rage" in San Francisco and how it
has produced a highly politicized and radicalized
sensibility among today's community leaders).  This
rage, along with the heartbreak and bewilderment spread
by the plunge into AIDS, is detailed in various other
works.  See, e.q., PERSONAL DISPATCHES: WRITERS
CONFRONT AIDS (John Preston ed. 1989)  (presenting a
collection of essays by various authors); ANDREW
HOLLERAN, GROUND ZERO (1988)  (presenting a series of
essays by the same author, and focused on the New York
experience); PAUL MONETTE, BORROWED TIME: AN AIDS
MEMOIR (1988)  (describing the slow death of the
author's partner in Los Angeles).

28.  See, e.q., GAY VOICES FROM EAST GERMANY (Jurgen
Lemke ed. 1991).  See generally HOMOSEXUALITY: A
EUROPEAN COMMUNITY ISSUE, ESSAYS ON LESBIAN AND GAY
RIGHTS IN EUROPEAN LAW AND POLICY (Kees Waaldijk &
Andrew Clapham eds. 1993).

29.  See, e.q., Frances Fitzgerald, The Castro-- I, THE
NEW YORKER, July 21, 1986, at 34 and Frances
Fitzgerald, The Castro-II, July 28, 1986, at 44
(providing an in-depth look at the Gay and Lesbian
community centered in the Castro district of San
Francisco).  See also Gayle Rubin, Thinking Sex, ln
PLEASURE AND DANGER: EXPLORING FEMALE SEXUALITY 267,
296-97 (Carole S. Vance ed. 1984)  (observing that "Gay
pioneers occupied neighborhoods that were centrally
located but run down" and then achieved "spectacular
success... in creating a variegated gay economy").

30.  E.g., MEN ON MEN: BEST NEW GAY FICTION (George
Stambolian ed. 1986) and WOMEN ON WOMEN: AN ANTHOLOGY
OF AMERICAN LESBIAN SHORT FICTION (Joan Nestle & Naomi
Holoch eds. 1990).

31.  E.g., ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE, BLACK BOOK (1986).

32.  E.g., ARMISTEAD MAUPIN, 28 BARBARY LANE: A TALES
OF THE CITY OMNIBUS (1990)  (pulling together the
popular "tales of city" series, which also were
produced as a television mini-series during 1994).

33.  See generally Michael Bronski, CULTURE SHOCK: THE
MAKING OF A GAY SENSIBILITY (1984).

34.  For instance, in the early 1990s, the San
Francisco Board of Supervisors included Harry Britt,
who served as President of the Board, Roberta
Achtenberg, and Carole Midgen, all of whom were
elected as openly Gay or Lesbian leaders.  Moreover the
mayor, Art Agnos, was a openly allied with the Gay and
Lesbian political community.

35.  See infra notes 56 to 79 and accompanying text.

36.  E.g., David Link, I am Not Queer, 25 REASON 45
(1993) (arguing that Queer will always trigger negative
connotations and that the radicalism of Queerness is
unnecessary).

37.  Much of this scholarship is incorporated in
Francisco Valdes, Queers, Sissies, Dykes & Tomboys:
Deconstructing the Conflation of Sex, Gender, and
Sexual Orientation in EuroAmerican Law and Society,
CAL. L. REV.(forthcoming).

38.  See Lawrence Friedman, The Concept of Self in
Legal Culture, 38 Cleve. St. L. Rev. 517 (1990).

39.  The basics of this ongoing struggle is captured in
JAMES DAVISON HUNTER, CULTURE WARS:  THE STRUGGLE TO
DEFINE AMERICA (1991) .

40.  See, e.g., Patricia A. Cain, Feminist
Jurisprudence: Grounding the Theories, 4 BERKELEY
WOMEN'S L.J. 191 (1989-90) (critiquing the general
tendency to omit sexual orientation issues from
Feminist legal scholarship).

41.  See infra notes 57 to 82 and accompanying text.

42.  See infra notes 57 to 82 and accompanying text.

43.  Angela Harris, Race, Essentialism, and Feminist
Legal Theory, 42 STAN. L. REV. 582, 608 (1990).

44.  See Kimberle Crenshaw, Demarginalizinq the
Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique
of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and
Antiracist Politics, 1989 U. CHI. LEGAL F. 139, 166
(1989)  (introducing the concept of intersectionality);
Kimberle Crenshaw, Mappinq the Margins:
of Color, 43 STAN. L. REV. 1241, 1251-53 (1991)=20
(developing and applying the insights of
intersectionality).

45.  Liz, My Name is Liz, ln COMPANERAS: LATINA
LESBIANS (AN ANTHOLOGY) 77, 79 (Juanita Ramos ed.
1987).

46.  E.q., Sleeping With the Enemy? Talking About Men,
Race, and Relationships, OUT/LOOK, Winter 1992, at 30.

47.  These two examples are not isolated instances, but
part of a small though growing discourse.  See also,
e.q., Richard Fung, Looking for My Penis: The
Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn, ln
HOW DO I LOOK? QUEER FILM AND VIDEO 145-60 (Bad
Object-Choices ed. 1991); Kobena Mercer, Skin Head Sex
Thing: Racial Difference and the Homoerotic Imaginary,
ln id. at 169-210.

48.  E.q., Mari J. Matsuda, Beside My Sister, Facing
the Enemy: Legal Theory Out of Coalition, 43 STAN. L.
REV. 1183 (1991).

49.  However, reflecting the dearth of germane material
from the law, most of the readings compiled for this
workshop came from sources in other disciplines.  See
Readings for Plenary Session on Race =A0Sexual
Orientation for the 1994 Critical Race Theory Workshop
(Peter Kwan & Francisco Valdes eds. 1994)  (copy on
file with author).

50.  Matsuda, supra note 48 at 1188.

51.  See generally Mari Matsuda, When The First Quail
Calls: Multiple Consciousness as Jurisprudential
Method, 11 Women's Rights Rptr. 7 (1989)  (introducing
the concept of multiple consciousness as the ability to
see how law operates on various levels simultaneously
and sometimes inconsistently).

52.  See, e.g., FORMS OF DESIRE: SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST CONTROVERSY (Edward Stein
ed., 1990).  See also John P. De Ceccon & John P. Elia,
A Critique and Synthesis of Biological Essentialism and
Social Constructionist Views of Sexuality and Gender,
24 J. HOMOSEXUALITY 1 (1993); Carole S. Vance, Social
Construction Theory: Problems in the History of
Sexuality, ln HOMOSEXUALITY, WHICH HOMOSEXUALITY?:
ESSAYS FROM THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE ON
LESBIAN AND GAY STUDIES (Carole Vance, Martha Vicinus =8D
Jeffrey Weeks eds., 1989).

53.  See supra notes 57 to 79 and accompanying text.

54.  RUTHANN ROBSON, LESBIAN (OUT)LAW: SURVIVAL UNDER
THE RULE OF LAW 22 (1992)  (noting that the bulk of
"sexual orientation" scholarship focuses on Gay male
issues and arguing that "[i]f this trend continues,=20
[Q]ueer legal theory will be gay male theory")

55.  See Andrea L. Johnson, Legal And Regulatory Issues
Confronting Cities in Developing an Interconnected
Fiber Optic Network; The San Diego Model, RUTGERS
COMPUTER & TECH. L.J. (1994)  (manuscript on file with
author).

56.  The concept of Psycho-Social Isolation, which is
sketched here, is developed in more detail in Francisco
Valdes, Sourcing the Mutualities and Continuities of
Heterosexism and Androsexism: Tracing the Conflation of
Sex, Gender. and Sexual Orientation to Its Origins
(forthcoming)  (unfinished manuscript on file with
author).
                        =20
57.  See generally Martha Mahoney, Note, Law and Racial
Geography: Public Housing and the Economy in New
Orleans, 42 STAN. L. REV. 1251 (1990)  (using the New
Orleans experience to examine how housing politics and
policies have failed to overcome the physical
segregation races through ghettos).

58.  See, e.g., Thomas Ross, The Rhetorical Tapestry of
Race: White Innocence and Black Abstraction, 32 WM. &
MARY L. REV. 1 (1990)  (showing the ways in which
African-Americans have been constructed and represented
as inferiors).

59.  60 U.S.  (19 How.) 393 (1857)  (in which the
Supreme Court validated race-based slavery by defining
African-Americans as "property" with no rights rather
than as "citizens" with standing to invoke the
protection of the courts).

60.  163 U.S. 537 (1896)  (in which the Supreme Court
validated the now-discredited "separate but equal"
doctrine that in actuality kept African-Americans
"separate" from the white majority but most certainly
not "equal" to it).

61.  323 U.S. 214 (1944)  (in which the Supreme Court
validated the internment of persons with a Japanese
ancestry and the resulting confiscation of their
property).  This case was one of several that approved
the government's mistreatment of Asian Americans during
World War II.  See generally PETER IRONS, JUSTICE AT
WAR: THE STORY OF THE JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNMENT
CASES (1983).

62.  See, e.g., Roy L. Brooks, The Ecology of
Inequality: The Rise of the African-American
Underclass, 8 HARV. BLACKLETTER J. 1 (1991)  (exploring
the reasons for the continuing segregation of
African-Americans in pockets of poverty).

63.  See generally Lani Guinier, The Triumph of
Tokenism: The Voting Rights Act and the Theory of Black
Electoral Success, 89 MICH. L. REV. 1077 (1991)=20
(exploring ways and means through which racial
minorities may go beyond token gains in political
arenas).

64.  See generally DERRICK BELL, FACES AT THE BOTTOM OF
THE WELL: THE PERMANENCE OF RACISM (1992)  (considering
the apparent permanence of racist ideology in law and
society).

65.  See generally Duncan Kennedy, The Stages of the
Decline of the Public/Private Distinction, 130 U. PA.
L. REV. 1349 (1982) (arguing that the distinction does
not dictate judicial choices and rulings but that it
facilitates desired outcomes motivated by other
reasons).

66.  See generally Wendy W. Williams, The Equality
Crisis:  Some Reflections On Culture. Courts &
Feminism, 7 WOMEN'S RTS. L. REP. 175, 176-79 (1982)=20
(reviewing judicial mistreatment of women).

67.  83 U.S.  (16 Wall. 130 (1872)  (in which the Court
approved the exclusion of women from the practice of
law, partially on the grounds that God meant for them
to stay at home).

68.  335 U.S. 464 (1948)  (in which the Court upheld
the denial of bartending licenses to all women except
the wives or daughters of male bar owners).

69.  368 U.S. 57 (1961)  (in which the Court upheld the
automatic exclusion of women from juries so that they
could stay home and continue to serve as the "center"
of family life).

70.  E.q., Honorable Judith S. Kaye, Women Lawyers in
Big Firms: A Study in Progress Toward Gender Equality,
57 FORD. L. REV. 111 (1989)  (a lecture in which Judge
Kaye discusses how obstacles like the mommy track and
the glass ceiling impeded the social and economic
progress of women in law practice) and Leslie Bender,
Sex Discrimination or Gender Inequality?, 57 FORD. L.
REV. 941 (1989)  (commenting on the Kaye lecture).

71.  See, e.q., Ellen V. Futter, Women Professionals:
The Slow Rise to the Top, 57 FORD. L. REV. 965 (1989)=20
(discussing how women have been allowed into
entry-level positions while remaining excluded from
inner circles of power).

72.  See generally THE ORIGINAL COMING OUT STORIES
(Julia Penelope & Susan J. Wolfe eds. 2d ed. 1989)=20
(describing the experiences of various men and women
while in the Closet and while trying to "come out" of
the Closet).

73.  See generally MICHAEL SIGNORILE, QUEER IN AMERICA
(1993) (describing and denouncing the continuing
mistreatment of Lesbians and Gay men in American
society).

74.  E.g., Gene Weingarten, Fatal Abstraction: The
Death and Life of Artist Carroll Sockwell-- An
Investigative Obituary, WASH. POST, Sept. 27, 1992, at
F1 (reporting that the artist had "been committed to
[an institution] by his family because he was gay").

75.  See, e.g., Francisco Valdes, Sexual Minorities in
the Military: Charting the Constitutional Frontiers of
Status and Conduct, 27 CREIGHT. L. REV. 381 (1994)=20
(critiquing the history of the exclusionary policy and
its acceptance by the courts, including the most recent
"don't ask, don't tell" compromise issued by the
Clinton Administration in 1994).

76.  See Brad Cain, Anti-Gay Proposal Remains Divisive
After Oregon Vote, SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIB., Nov. 8, 1992,
at a-35 (reporting that the initiative, though
defeated, nonetheless had "unleashed prejudice" against
sexual minorities).  See also Honorable Hans A. Linde,
When Initiative Lawmaking is Not "Republican
Government": The Campaign Against Homosexuality, 72
OR. L. REV. 19 (1993)  (considering how "popular"
initiatives that seek to formalize societal
discrimination against unpopular groups may violate the
constitutional guarantee of republican government).

77.  Evans v. Romer, 854 P.2d 1270 (Colo. 1993)=20
(holding that efforts to embed the right to
discriminate in the constitution effectively "fence
out" minority groups from electoral opportunities to
change the law and thus violate the right of all to
participate in the political process on equal footing).

78.  478 U.S. 186 (1986).

79.  See, e.g., Sheila Foster, Difference and Equality:
A Critical Assessment of "Diversity", 1993 WISC. L.
REV. 105 (critiquing current notions of diversity
arguing that the goal of diversity should be to include
individuals from groups that have been systematically
excluded or marginalized in society and in law).

80.  The most recent example from my personal history
is the San Diego County Bar Association Task Force on
Diversity in the Profession, to which I belong.  The
task force was formed in 1991 to bring together
representatives from traditionally marginalized groups
within the legal profession in order to discuss
problems and craft solutions.  The task force has
developed a first-ever bias survey that comprehensively
addresses prejudice based on race, nationality,
religion, sex, sexual orientation, and physical
handicap.  Based on personal participation, the
deliberations and proceedings of the task force
illustrate and demonstrate the potential power of
connective sensibilities and efforts.

81.  Another example from my personal history involves
the Coalition for a Diversified Faculty at Stanford Law
School during 1990-91, to which I belonged.  This ad
hoc group of students came together to help the school
identify prospective candidates for faculty
appointments, but the many needs to be filled coupled
with the few positions available threatened to rupture
the coalition.  However, after much discussion, the
group came to the consensus that the appointment of a
woman of color and of an openly Lesbian or Gay
candidate should take precedence over other needs
because the faculty at that time included neither type
of person.  That year, two of the three appointments
made went to a woman of color and an openly Lesbian
candidate.

82.  See generally Sharon Parker, Understanding
Coalition, 43 STAN. L. REV. 1193 (1991)  (describing
coalitions as "something natural, an extension of
kinship, like family and community").

83.  This "category" was posed in an after-class
discussion during the Legal Education Seminar offered
at Stanford Law School in the Autumn 1991 term.  I note
with interest that the category overlaps somewhat with
a similar query posed to Ruthann Robson in a different
setting.  See Ruthann Robson, Embodiment(s): The
Possibilities of Lesbian Legal Theory in Bodies
Problematized by Postmodernisms and Feminisms, 2 L. &
SEXUALITY 37, 58 (1992)  (the precise query posed there
was "green-eyed golf aficionados").  I do not know what
to make of the similarity in hypothesizing but note it
for the record, as they say.

84.  The words appear above the portico of the Supreme
Court building in Washington, D.C., much like an
advertisement on a corporate headquarters.  See also,
e.g., U.S. CONST. amend. XIV.

85.  For a fairly comprehensive listing of
inequalities, see Developments in the Law- Sexual
Orientation and the Law. 102 HARV. L. REV. 1508 (1989).

86.  E.g., Civil Rights Group Joins Boycott Effort,
L.A. TIMES, Jan. 7, 1993, at A13 (reporting that the
predominantly Black Southern Christian Leadership
Conference had joined the boycott of Colorado called by
Lesbian and Gay rights activists following the vote);
Latino Journalists Vote to Move Convention Out of
Colorado, L.A. TIMES, Jan. 10, 1993, at 23 (reporting
that the National Association of Hispanic Journalists
also had joined the boycott protesting passage of the
amendment); HRCF Connects Choice With Gay/Lesbian
Agenda at Nat'l March, GAY & LESBIAN TIMES, April 16,
1992, at 19 (reporting that the Human Rights Campaign
Fund, the leading sexual minority political action
committee, had linked reproductive choice with Lesbian
and Gay issues); Gary Libman, Sharing a Political
Platform, L.A. TIMES, Nov. 15, 1990, at E1 (reporting
that Lesbian involvement in AIDS issues and
organizations has reduced sexism among Gay males and
helped to forge new alliances).  See also The Hon.
Thelton E. Henderson, Coming Out for Gay Rights, 3 YALE
J.L. & LIB. 25 (1992)  (arguing that the subordination
of sexual minorities and or racial minorities are
akin); Mari J. Matsuda, Beside My Sister, Facing the
Enemy: Legal Theory Out of Coalition, 43 STAN. L. REV.
1183 (1991)  (urging that critical legal scholars look
for and expose the inter-relationships of various
bigotries).