An Engaged State: Sexuality, Governance, and the Potential for Change

For lesbians, gay men, feminists, and other progressive forces, the state has proved in recent years a key site of engagement. Objectives and strategies have, nonetheless, varied: resisting police practices and repressive legislation through direct action; the development of municipal equal opportunities initiatives; campaigning for law reform; protesting government inaction over AIDS. Out of these struggles, different perspectives and issues have begun to appear on state agendas; new social forces have won access to state power.1 Yet, can the state be deployed as a 'vehicle' for progressive change in the area of sexuality, or is it simply a force charged with the maintenance of the status quo? Much has been written, from an 'external' perspective, on the state as a regulator of sexual relations and, to a lesser extent, from an 'internal' position, on the state as a terrain across which different forces do battle.2 In this paper I draw on both approaches to explore the prospects and limits of an oppositional state sexual politics. My focus is on the ways in which state practice steers sexual struggles and agendas in particular directions. I am, therefore, less concerned here with normative questions as to whether oppositional social forces should attempt to deploy state power. I hope, however, that this discussion will be of relevance to more strategy-oriented debates.