Patterns of private sexual behavior are not simply private; they are public and political because they constitute a significant part of how our culture thinks of identity. And it is only through public acknowledgment of their legitimacy that those identities are recognized and legitimated. To outlaw, for example, gay sex or merely to tolerate it, is to outlaw or merely tolerate a certain identity. Both are ultimately forms of oppression, albeit the one more overtly so than the other.
