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But the seventies also witnessed the flowering of gay clubbing, especially in post-Stonewall New York. For the gay community in this decade, clubbing, according to Garratt, became 'a religion, a release, a way of life'. The most notable New York venues in that era were probably the Sanctuary and the Loft, home to DJ David Mancuso. Saturday Night For Ever includes some enthusiastic reminiscences of the gay scene in London: the drugs, the songs and the very late nights. The camp, glam impulses behind the upsurge in gay clubbing influenced the image of disco in the mid-Seventies so much that it was often perceived as the preserve of three constituencies - blacks, gays and working-class women - all of whom were even less well represented in the upper echelons of rock criticism than they were in society at large. The 'Disco Sucks' campaign was a white, macho reaction against gay liberation and black pride more than a musical reaction against drum machines. In England, in the same year as the 'Disco Sucks' demo in America, The Young Nationalist - a British National Party publication - told its readers: 'Disco and its melting pot pseudo-philosophy must be fought or Britain's streets will be full of black-worshipping soul boys.'

THE SHIFTING MEANINGS OF "QUEER"

It is important to note the re-appropriation of the term "queer" in the post-Stonewall era and its contemporary use as an affirmative self-nominated identity label. Minorities have long expoused this strategy- pejoritives like 'dyke' and 'fag' have been turned into badges of pride, gangs ta rappers have transformed 'nigga' into a fraternal greeting. After theories put forth by Judityutler, Teresa de Lauretis, Simon Wtney, Richard Dyer and others, "queer no longer indicates the biological sex or gender of the subject. Alexander Doty uses the term to describe a cultural commonground between lesbians and gays as well as other non-straights- a term representing unity as well as suggesting diversity. Most importantly, the term indicates " an ontological challenge to dominant labeling philosophies, especially the medicalization of the subject implied by the word 'homosexual', in the era of AIDS, as well as a challenge to discrete gender categories embedded in the divided phrase 'gay and lesbian'." (See Moe Myer The Politics and Poetics of Camp, 1994) Most broadly, "Queer" stands for any alternative sexuality, whether or not lived, which includes bisexuality, transgender, transexual, and transvestite communities, the S&M movement, people of color, lesbians who sleep with men, radical sex, and any and all others who falls somewhere within what Adrienne Rich would call a queer "continuum."

Same-sex activity, then, has always been a part of human culture, although the concept of a sexual identity based upon gender preference seems to be relatively recent. One possible reason for this, suggested by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was that persecution of homosexuality tends to encourage certain individuals to be exclusively homosexual and to define themselves as such, and homophobic laws encourage the growth of a gay sub-culture. Therefore, an individual who grows up in a society with strong views around which gender one is supposed to feel attracted to is influenced by these opinions during his or her development, and if they experience same-sex attraction the result is that such feelings are either buried or they become stronger as a reaction against suppression. There certainly were people in antiquity who were exclusively homosexual, but for most of them this was not an issue as their culture had a niche for them and did not sanction them because of their relationships. They would be absorbed into general society. However, when such individuals are threatened by a culture that tries to deny their existence, they have to fight back in order to survive, and this makes it necessary for them to have a definite sexual identity. -- http://pages.zoom.co.uk/lgs/facts.html

Singer is a utilitarian, a follower of the 19th-century philosophers Jeremy Bentham and J S Mill, who formulated the treatise that the best moral good was the happiness of the greatest number. In utilitarianism, an action is judged not by its intrinsic nature, but by its consequences. The crucial and only important moral question is, does it reduce suffering and/or increase happiness?