Although American commerce capitalizes on LesBiGays as consumers, American politics and law exploit LesBiGays as citizens. Whether in the chambers of the judiciary, on the floors of the legislatures, at the ballot boxes of the electorate, or through the ranks of the military, the state demands that LesBiGays fulfill their civic responsibilities, but it denies their civil rights. With statutory and common-law "crimes against nature,"4 the Defense of Marriage Act,5 "special rights,"6 and policies such as "don't ask, don't tell,"7 the state forces LesBiGays to yield to its discriminatory will in many intimate matters of personal freedom. Today's politics and law keep the closet door from swinging wide open.
In America's popular culture, then, LesBiGay identities abound. In its political culture, however, they emerge more tentatively. The commercial and entertainment industries increasingly commodify and celebrate LesBiGay identities. The courts and legislatures generally discount and condemn them. Thus, there is a deep dissonance between the validation of LesBiGay identities in the economic marketplace of items and ideas and their devaluation in the legal arena of rights and remedies. Such a dissonance fosters cultural fragmentation of LesBiGay identities, and questions whether or how they are valued.
Surprisingly, legal theorists and practitioners have largely ignored or misunderstood this schizoid treatment of LesBiGay identity. Typically, they look primarily to politics and law for the paths to LesBiGay self-realization and social inclusion. The academy and activists have yet to appreciate that consumer-driven corporatism, commercial entrepreneurship, and the mass media's fetishes and fantasies are unleashing powerful cultural forces that will influence, for better or worse, the LesBiGay quest for liberty and equality. For if "the business of America is business,"8 then surely the Americanization of the LesBiGay identity is business, too. Consequently, any legal theory or political program that takes no serious account of the commodified LesBiGay identity is likely to fail. Such a serious account is the object of this Essay.
