k-punk said:
Surely it's evident BOTH that the Family is a major ideological configuration in capitalism AND that homosexuality is no threat whatsoever to capital. On the contrary, in fact. A concentration on sexuality - with people rolling up to define themselves by their sexual practices, completely ignoring Foucault's message in History of Sexuality 1 - has been a major theme of the last two decades of conservatism.
I think you're right, K, that both the family and homosexuality pose no threat but the question remains, what <em>is</em> the threat? individually, it may be possible to develop a belief system / ideology that opposes fundamental capitalist concerns but collectively, as soon as people stand behind a particular ideological framework, capitalism has the capacity to use that identification as a means for commodification... hence revolutionary Che trails are now packaged as holidays for supplement readers, punk became a brand, cyber-punk became an way of selling shiny clothes / club nights etc...
which leaves us with... well, i guess that's the issue... we are forced into the acceptance of the <em>best possible</em> rather than the ultimate (you're right when you say that the idea of something beyond the family has died a death - perhaps because of the likes of RD Laing et al preaching about the darkside of the family whilst maintaining a neat family unit themselves - which is really saying nothing more than "they just don't know how to do it properly, a rhetoric employed by almost all non-neurotic parents")
Jack Dee (paraphrased) "Your 3 year old may be reading Chaucer but mine is spreading their own faeces aorund the room"
in addition, i get the creeping feeling that we dissolve the (perhaps illusory) nuclear unit only to replace it with a wider, perhaps even national, identity where the 'other' is defined in broaderbut no less destructive sweeps...
Maybe i'm missing something. Hope so.
I