The godfather of modern homosexuality is Freud (independent of
his own sexual orientation), insofar as sexual expression
remains a symbolic act. Homosexuality, evading natural selection
and eliciting acceptance as an expression of a deeply rooted
human complex, is part of the ubiquitous sexual experience of the
species. The fact that homosexuality, documented in some of the
earliest writings as a taboo, along with incest and bestiality,
predated Freud does not contradict this assertion. Homosexual
Eros has a different finality than heterosexual Eros. The extent
of homosexuality under the structural circumstances of the
civilization of illiteracy is not only the result of increased
tolerance and permissiveness. Neither is it merely the result of
freedom resulting from an expanded notion of liberal democracy.
It is biologically relevant, and as a biological expression, it
is projected into practical experiences constitutive of
individuals, men or women, acknowledged as different because
their practical experience of self-constitution identifies them
as different. Their experience, though necessarily integrated in
today's global world, has many consequences for them and for
others.
While research has yet to confirm the hypothesis of structural
peculiarities in the brain and genes of homosexuals, the
specifics of the self-constitution process through practical
experiences in a world subject to natural selection cannot be
overlooked. Genetics tells us that the borderline between
genders is less clear-cut than we assumed. Be this as it may,
homosexuality takes place under a different set of biological
and social expectations than do heterosexuality and other forms
of sexuality. It is an act in itself, with its own goal, with no
implicit commitment to offspring, and thus different in its
intrinsic set of responsibilities and their connection to the
social contract. But for this matter, so is heterosexuality
under the protection of the pill, the condom, or any other birth
control device or method, abortion included.
A different sense of future, moreover an expectation of instant
gratification, is established in the sexual experience of
homosexuality. Exactly this characteristic acknowledges the
underlying structure of the pragmatics of high efficiency that
makes homosexual experiences possible, and even economically
acceptable. Acknowledged also is the scale of humankind.
Survival is much less affected by fruitless sexuality than
within a limited scale of existence and activity. The freedom
gained through birth control methods and the freedom to practice
non-reproductive sexual relations, such as homosexual love, are
in some ways similar. It is impossible not to notice that the
development under discussion displays a shift from a domain of
vulnerability in regard to the species-any imbalance in
procreation, under conditions of severe selection, affects the
chances of survival-to the domain of the individual.
The extreme case of AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome),
which is transmitted sexually (among other ways), reintroduced
moral concerns at a time when morality was almost dropped from
erotic language and expelled from the human erotic experience.
The frenzy of sexual freedom and the confusion resulting from the
spread of AIDS present contradictory images of a much broader
development that affects human erotic behavior, and probably
much more than that. Nobody, no doomsayer on record, whether
coming from a literate perspective or already integrated in the
pragmatics of the civilization of illiteracy, predicted the new
vulnerability which AIDS makes so painfully evident, inside and
outside the homosexual segment of the population. The integrated
global nature of human life brought Africa, with its large
AIDS-infected population, close to countries that reached a
different (not to use the word higher) level of civilization.
AIDS impacted on the sense of invulnerability, assumed by
individuals in industrialized countries as almost a right. This
invulnerability is now drastically tested, despite the enormous
effort to address AIDS. The disease suddenly put globality in a
new light. Statistics connect the sense of danger experienced in
Hollywood by HIV-infected movie stars, fashion designers, and
dancers to the desperation of the disenfranchised in the first
world-drug addicts, the urban poor, and prostitutes-and to the
disenfranchised and working poor of the Third World.
Far from being a new phenomenon, the homosexual and lesbian
preference, or lifestyle as it is euphemistically called,
reaches a status of controversial acceptance in the civilization
of illiteracy. The paradox is that while the choice of
homosexuality over heterosexuality is facilitated by the
pragmatic context of the civilization of illiteracy, the
activism of homosexuality solicits recognition within the
structures characteristic of literacy. It is very ironic that
gay activism, stimulated by the many consequences of the AIDS
epidemic, attempts to reverse time, fighting for equal access to
exactly those means in which the values and prejudices that
condemn homosexuality are embedded. It looks like homosexuals
want to rewrite the book or books in which they are damned,
instead of freeing themselves from them. Homosexuals want their
voice to be heard in church and politics. They want their cause
present in ethical writings, and their rights encoded in new
laws and rules. They want to enlighten others by making their
experience known as art, literature, and social discourse. The
genetic condition of the homosexual choice needs to be
considered together with the variety of contexts pertaining to
the diversity of the civilization of illiteracy that make its
unfolding possible.
There is a need to be aware that, between the function of
procreation and divergent sexual behavior, a whole gamut of
human cultural experience continues to unfold and challenges
settled standards. This experience goes beyond language and the
literate structure of a linear, sequential, hierarchic,
centralized, deterministic pragmatics of limited choice. Human
language, as a projection of human beings living within a
context appropriate to their self-preservation and development,
participated in the taming of our sexual drive. Illiteracy leads
to its endless diversification, affecting sexuality in all its
manifestations, such as patterns of mobility and settlement,
family and community life, social rules, and the encoding of
values in moral, economic, and educational systems.
Orality and sexuality were characterized by immediateness, and a
reduced sense of space and time. Sex equaled instinct. With
writing, and thus the possibility of what later would become
literacy, a new set of underlying elements was acknowledged.
Sexuality was subjected to the experience of accepted rules-the
do's and don'ts appropriate to expectations of efficiency, and
their resulting values, corresponding to the scale of humankind
and the natural condition. Reproduction still dominated
sexuality, while rules of optimal human interaction, encoded in
religion or social expectations, started to permeate erotic
behavior. To a great extent, language in its literate form
expresses the awareness of the various erotic dimensions as they
were socially acknowledged at any given time. Literacy enrolled
sexuality in the quest for higher productivity and sustained
consumption characteristic of the pragmatics associated with the
Industrial Revolution. Once conditions making literacy necessary
are overruled by new conditions, sexuality undergoes
corresponding changes. Basically, sexuality seems to return to
immediateness, as it integrates many mediating elements.
Sexuality unfolds in an unrestricted set of varieties, escaping
some of its natural determination. In keeping with the shorter
and shorter cycles of human activity, sexuality turns into an
experience of transitory encounters. Since it is a form of human
expression, it ascertains its condition as yet another sign
system, or language, among the many participating in the
practical experiences of our new pragmatic context. It now
bridges dramatically between life and death, in a world where the
currency of both life and death is, for all practical purposes,
devaluated.