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THREE Mary Eaton interrogatesthephenomenon of racialabsence in equalityrightsjurisprudencedealingwith sexual orientation.She analyzestwoAmericancaseswhere issues of raceand sexualorientationsurface:Williamson v. A. G. Edwards & Sons Inc. and Watkins v. United States Army . Eatonconcludesthat the erasureof racein these casessuggeststhat homosexualityislegallycodedas white and, at the same time, that racehas beenlegallycodedas heterosexual.Morebroadly , shesuggeststhat the casesare symptomaticof a modeof rea~oning that dependsupon the separationof identities . As a consequence , reracializingthe homosexualshould beseenas necessarytoa disruptionof the hetero-homobinary itself Homosexual Unmodified: Speculations on Law's Discourse, Race, and the Construction of Sexual Identity Mary Eaton Getting There from Here: An Extended Prolegomenon As they have done for many years, in 1994 lesbians and gaysl once again took to the streets of New York City to mark yet another Gay Pride Day. In some respects the 1994 parade was indistinguishable from those of years past . The usual array of leather men , queens, butches , and femmes were in evidence , and once again the same political tensions concerning the purpose of the march and the direction of the movement threatened to install divisiveness in the place of unity without ever actually succeeding in doing so. For two reasons, though , the 1994 queer extravaganza was not at all like those of years past. Because 1969 was the year of the infamous Stonewall riots-riots considered by many to have inaugurated gay liberation as a political movement-1994 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the organized quest for political and civil rights. As well , and no doubt because this was the year of the queer silver jubilee, turnout for the parade was unsurpassed . According to the organizers , appro ximately 1.1 million lesbians , gays, bisexuals, and other sexual "minorities" from 72 countries participated in the march . 46 Copyrighted Material HOMOSE XUAL UNMODIFIED 47 If for these two reasons Gay Pride '94 does not make its way into the annals of queer social history, it certainly should for another, perhaps even more important, one: The parade's freedom flag, one mile in length and three tons in weight, which symbolized a level of diversity amongst those gathered under the banner of queer that was nothing short of phenomenal. In an age in which issues of racial and other "differences " have threatened to cut asunder the legitimacy and longevity of many identity-based political movements, the fact that the parade attracted such a broad assortment of participants is remarkable in and of itself. Even if the gay rights movement is no exemplar of bad racial politics , it undeniably has not developed a consciousness particularly well attuned to issues of racial difference/dominance and the challenges they pose . First-person accounts of gay white solipsism seem to be growing each year. 2 The portrait of gays as extraordinarily white is by no means a result of the racial politics of the gay rights movement alone . Ideas about race and culture have played an enduring role in the historical development of antigay sentiments and continue to contribute to the representation of homosexuality as a white phenome non .? The tendency to regard AIDS as a disease peculiar to white society is a particularly tragic example of the way in which heterosexism and homophobia have been racially contoured in contemporary times ." In place of this monochromatic image of homosexuality, the 1994 parade revealed a different, more spectral truth about this constituency of queers . Although the parade thus carried unprecedented potential to call conceptions of homosexuality as culturally confined and racially monolithic into critical question, that promise went unrealized in the claims for reform that emanated from the gathering. Greater sexual freedom for homosexuals through the acquisition of more and better legal rights emerged as the clarion call. Sexual orientation , it was demanded, should be included as a prohibited ground of discrimination in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights along with race, sex, and those other features of personhood already recognized by the international community as illegitimate bases upon which to judge the moral worth and political and civil status of individuals . Since this plea for the recognition of the human rights of homosexuals was pitched internationally, diversity of a geopolitical sort did figure in the claim . Apart from this, though the insistence that sexual orientation be included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was wholly indistinguishable from similar attempts to secure civil rights for gays in domestic legislation. In a sense, things really could not be otherwise. If racial difference registered more on the level of spectacle than on the level of subCopyrighted Material [3.145.105.105...

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