The queerfolk turn the tables on the assimilationist goals of the conventionalists. Vaid further explains: "That gay people are so universally regarded as a threat to be harshly suppressed suggests that gay and lesbian culture contains ideas that are deeply transformational--and, I believe, redemptive--to the political, moral, and social order now in place."¹²¹ At their core, then, the queerfolk embrace a multidimensional worldview of interconnected systems of oppression, espouse the normative objective of cultural transformation and human liberation, and endorse an approach of substantive equality that adopts Queerness writ large as a basis for celebrating difference.

When it comes to commerce, however, the conventionalists and queerfolk are two sides of the same coin. Obviously, one might infer from conventionalist commitments that whatever economic rights against the state heterosexuals enjoy would transfer to LesBiGays. Similarly, one might infer from queerfolk visions that the totalizing cultural transformation they seek could have dramatic economic ramifications. What is undeniable, though, is that the commercial marketplace is not put front-and-center by either the conventionalists or queerfolk. And, for momentous reasons, this omission is both unfortunate and ironic.

Were the conventionalists to account for the commodified LesBiGay identity, those scholars would recognize that LesBiGay "self-actualization" within the American commercial system augments the group's social valorization and participatory rights as citizen-consumers. By striving to win in the economic race, LesBiGays are increasingly liberated at the localized level of commerce, despite being continuously restricted at the state and national levels of government. And, by playing to succeed in the image game, LesBiGays are increasingly celebrated within the mythmaking machines of the commercial entertainment culture, despite being continuously censured within the policymaking mechanisms of the political and legal culture. In effect, then, the commercially conscious conventionalists might witness something approaching their assimilationist goals, but by market operations either unacknowledged or underappreciated heretofore.