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Gay and Lesbian Politics: Sexuality and the Emergence of a New Ethic. By Mark Blasius. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. 239p. $24.95 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Blasius' book on gay and lesbian politics makes two principle contributions to the contemporary discourse on the politics of the gay and lesbian movement. First, Blasius contends that lesbian and gay existence is best conceptualized as an ethos, as opposed to a sexual orientation, sexual preference, life style, subculture, or community. Blasius argues that unlike the terms most frequently ascribed to gay and lesbian existence, a lesbian and gay ethos implies a conscious repudiation of society's dominant regime of truth, compulsory heterosexuality (a term borrowed from Adrienne Rich's 1980 article in Signs). Sexual orientation is problematic because of its association with the medical model of homosexuality, the cornerstone of the oppressive pathological etiologies of gay and lesbian existence. Sexual preference, on the other hand, reproduces the dominant regime of truth by trivializing the differences between gays and straights to anatomical proclivities or preferences. If this were indeed an accurate representation of public opinion, he argues, there would be no need for the institutions developed by lesbians and gays to secure their safety and promote their well being. Life style, on the other hand, implies a degree of self-reflection, self-creation, and community building, qualities that Blasius feels are the core of an ethos of lesbian and gay existence. But life style "is also a principle site at which we have all come to be governed" (p. 191). Life style, for example, has come to be associated with consumerism with its attendant materialistic assumptions concerning individualism, self-worth, and social obligation. The idea that gay and lesbian existence can be conceptualized as a life style ultimately suggests that gay and lesbian desire conforms, like all other life styles, to hegemonic social norms and power relationships. Thus, he argues that although life style incorporates some aspects of ethos, it is ultimately less encompassing and satisfying. The idea of a lesbian and gay subculture or community is clearly much closer to the author's own ideas concerning an ethos: "What is most important about it [is] that this sociologic community does facilitate the creation of . . . moral agency, . . . the creation of a specific kind of subjectivity" (p. 202). "Coming out" is perceived as an aspect of self-knowledge; socially, as an assertion of rights; and as creatively and intellectually constructing an alternative to compulsory heterosexuality as an order of truth about gays and lesbians. This specific kind of subjectivity is fostered by community, but it is enacted beyond the confines of the gay and lesbian subculture or community. The idea of a lesbian and gay ethos therefore constitutes an implicit challenge to the hegemony of compulsory heterosexuality. A second contribution of Gay and Lesbian Politics is the author's insightful discussion of gay and lesbian rights. Rejecting the proposition that the subject can be reduced simply to the current imbroglio between lesbians, gays, and the state, Blasius argues instead for an understanding of rights as relational: "It goes beyond a juridicodiscursive model of rights as granted to or withheld from individuals by the state to a conceptualization of a right within a normalizing-disciplinary ordering of powe?' (p. 133). This conception of rights puts the significance of social, economic, and religious institutions for lesbian and gay rights in the foreground. The implication of Blasius' argument is that the regulatory practices of the medical establishment, for example, can be as significant for gays and lesbians as the regulatory practices of the state. His discussion of AIDS and biopower is particularly apropos. Relational rights are predicated on the assumption that individuals desire and need the freedom "to constitute themselves as ethical beings" through choosing their "sexual-affectional relationships with others" (p. 141). For gays and lesbians, this means establishing their right to love whom they choose in a manner consistent with the mutual desires of the parties involved. A relational right, therefore, is based on the right of sexual-affectional self-determination. It is, furthermore, an assertion of the social and political validity of such a right and a demand for distributive justice. As such, the gay and lesbian ethos necessarily politicizes the normative order of compulsory heterosexuality, a normative order traditionally validated by metaphysical appeals to "nature" and "rationality." Blasius' perspective on rights and his articulation of a gay and lesbian ethos are informed by his careful reading of Foucault's concept of biopower, a concept that at one and the same time, calls into question the efficacy of the juridical-sovereign concept of power and asserts that modern power is, as well, an "administration of bodies and the calculated management of life" (p. 60). Blasius succeeds in explaining the implications of biopower for understanding sexuality as a "technology of government," the relevance of this concept for understanding gay and lesbian existence, and its implications for reconceptualizing the political goals of the lesbian and gay community. Blasius is most provocative in his discussion of erotics as the "principal ethical category for lesbians and gay men," arguing that it also "transforms sexuality as a technology of government" (p. 121). While there is little doubt in my mind that such erotic techniques are instrumental in challenging the dominant regime of truth about sexuality, the centrality of erotics in Blasius' theory of ethical agency (as opposed to other dimensions of gay and lesbian existence) is certain to be a point of contention between lesbians and gay men. Aside from the centrality of erotics in the development of the ethical agency of gays and lesbians, Blasius overly idealizes the ethical implications of gay and lesbian sexuality (what he chooses to call "erotic friendships") in his explication of relational rights. This is particularly apparent in his assumption that the self-conscious roleplaying so characteristic of some relationships is a bridge to equality in the wider social and political arena. Nevertheless, this is a highly rewarding work. It breaks new ground in the author's discussion of what it