The inclusion of bisexuals, transsexuals, and even heterosexuals who feel confined by conventional sexual expression, as “queer” removes the solid political ground they have struggled to mark out as a minority, and which provides the basis from which rights claims are made. This is indeed a problem as liberal democracy accords right to groups only if their membership is clear. A judgment in Colorado, for example, found that there was no case for outlawing discrimination against gay men, lesbians, or bisexuals since “We don’t have a group that is easily confinable.”
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The problem is that in order to gain citizenship rights, gays and lesbians have, quite reasonably, adopted the strategy of describing themselves as a “sexual minority.” This is seen as the only realistic way to gain a hearing for the extension of citizenship rights in liberal democracy. (…) They are much more likely to see homosexuality, like heterosexuality, as a historically and culturally specific identity rather than an innate disposition: we learn to see ourselves as having a “sexuality” only when such a view is socially available. This anti-essentialist view is also more likely to be held by the younger generation of “queer” activists, who reject the fixity of the “sexual minority” claim in favor of a more disruptive challenge to the status quo.
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