The real threat comes when lesbian and gay activities become part of an alternative way of life. For when people endorse the idea of sexual pluralism they are also implicitly endorsing social and political pluralism. When they affirm their lesbian or gay identities, when they assert their sense of belonging to social movements and communities organized around their sexual preferences they are making a political statement. Homosexuality then becomes more than an individual quirk or private choice. It becomes a challenge to absolute values of all types, whether of the Right or the Left.
Authoritarian regimes don t like that.
Homosexual activists have, however, mostly identified with the Left. And during some periods at least, the Left has given strong support to the lesbian and gay cause. In the 1890s, British socialist pioneer Edward Carpenter became a passionate advocate of sex reform. He campaigned both for equality between the sexes and for the rights of what he called uranians or the intermediate sex that is homosexuals. And he drew freely on the work of the great German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld.