ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the charisma of the performative subject to the charisma of geographical location, as exemplified by the role San Francisco's City Hall Plaza plays through its repeated citation as the stage of queer drama. It seeks to transfer the application of these ideas from human subject to geography. The chapter examines the simulcast of the Milk story and the Proposition 8 cases as a way of engaging in a queer critique of the history of gay politics in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza, a critique. It shows how the gay marriage movement both cites and disowns its Castro heritage in its quest for equality. The juxtaposition of the identitarian Milk years, replete with their pre-AIDS public sex utopian gay ghettos, against the quiet domesticity of two mommies in search of a certificate of approval underlines the way the marriage quest necessarily covers over a part of queer subjectivity.
