Imagine a situation in which African-Americans were routinely required to answer the racism of white supremacists or Jews the anti-Semitism of neo-Nazis or the disabled the claims of radical eugenicists. It is impossible to have a serious conversation with people who do not acknowledge your humanity and your equality before the law. And yet that is what lesbians and gay men are regularly expected to do.

In order to gain a public hearing, homosexuals are commonly expected, when they are allowed access to the media, to "debate" people who regard homosexuality as sin and gay and lesbian people as unnatural perverts. The result is that serious discussion of the situation of homosexual Americans and the discourse of civil rights that might emerge from it is too often over before it has begun. Most discussions about gay rights become demoralizing and unedifying encounters with radical anti-homosexual activists whose agenda is our obliteration, however much they decorate their intent with moralistic claims to reasoning about the social good.

Gays and lesbians have still a long way to go to securing equal protection of the laws. The issues of our inclusion in society are complicated and the policy decisions that will ensue equally so. We are a diverse assortment. Being gay is an identity that cuts across all others and does not lead to simple allegiance. What we now require is reasonable space to make our arguments, to identify ourselves and to educate our fellow citizens about who and what we are. The media need to move beyond prejudice and shock value to consider how gays and lesbians will be integrated into the American mix. Most gays and lesbians are eager for this discussion. We have it among ourselves all the time and our views differ as widely as do our lifestyles. We are eager to make the case for our civil rights and to go our contrary American ways after that.

Of course, a significant part of our movement is engaged in trying to respond to the widespread prejudice about and ignorance of homosexuals. The systematic way in which language reflects gender prejudice remains an index of the entrenchment of a patriarchal society. Homophobia, like sexism, has even deeper roots in our inherited culture than do racism and anti-Semitism. It flourishes in significant segments of all of the communities who have been themselves victims of extensive persecution in the United States. The result is that the prejudice against homosexuals is mixed up with the moral and cultural inheritance of most American citizens.