ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how anti-gay promiscuity discourses impact on popular and scientific knowledges of gay male relationships and sexual politics. It also explores the dynamics of a conflict about non-monogamy in one of the focus groups discussions. Some arguments against non-monogamy combine a politicisation of sexual ethics with an integrationist vision and assimilationist agenda. The chapter highlights the prominence of the non-monogamy question in debates about the demand for same-sex marriage rights. Certain strands of gay activism have taken an increasingly inimical stance towards gay male promiscuity, public sex and party culture. Over the last decades there has been a reorientation of the lesbian and gay political agenda away from a concern with identity and community to a politicisation of same-sex relationships. Apart from the stress of the civil or human rights aspect and an insistence on formal equality, many proponents of same-sex marriage have emphasised the cultural and socio-psychological benefits that marriage will bring for lesbians and gay men.
