What it means to be gay or lesbian is not a universal constant but is shaped by culture, era, and the specific social structures within which same-sex love has been lived. In some traditions it was integrated and unremarkable; in others it was sacred and set apart; in many it was tolerated in practice and condemned in doctrine — a gap that says something about the distance between what people know in their bodies and what institutions are willing to acknowledge. The contemporary identity of gay or lesbian is a particular political and personal formation that emerged from specific struggles and carries their marks.
Juana