This is one of those cases where the author doesn't quite seem to grasp the implications of his own argument.
The Advocate has decided to run a piece declaring that Peter Thiel isn't gay because he backs Trump.
Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire who made news this summer for endorsing Donald Trump at the Republican convention, is a man who has sex with other men. But is he gay?
That question might seem narrow, but it is actually raises a broad and crucial distinction we must make in our notions of sexuality, identity, and community.
Since the Paleolithic Age, people have had sex with people of the same gender. But the notion that this made someone “homosexual” or “gay” was a relatively recent phenomenon in human history.
Well yes. But you're not supposed to actually say so anymore.
The argument then continues that being gay means identifying with gay culture rather than having sex with other men. Which is nice and all in that it makes it possible to declare people not gay if they support Trump. But the flip side of this is that gay is an identification rather than a genetic orientation. If a gay liberal becomes conservative, is he "cured"?
Anyway the argument is entertainingly collectivist.
By the logic of gay liberation, Thiel is an example of a man who has sex with other men, but not a gay man. Because he does not embrace the struggle of people to embrace their distinctive identity... Thiel reaffirmed his own sexual choices — while separating himself from gay identity.
Which is to say that being gay is a collective left-wing identity. And Thiel is not part of the gay collective because he is pursuing his own individual tendencies rather than boarding the mothership.
But this is the illogically logical endgame of every left-wing identity group agenda. What starts out with the promise of personal liberation becomes a collective obligation to a manufactured identity group whose goal is left-wing politics. The Advocate piece is transparent in that it admits that. There's no liberation here. Just collectivization.