PHRASE: Homosexuality and death.

The text talks of the "sinthome" and how that relates to queer theory. One of the ideas presented relates the idea of homosexuality with death. It is difficult for a culture to accept homosexuality, because it denotes an end to reproduction (the traditional coupling of male and female), and therefore and end to the future, or "futurity." Lacan calls this an "absence of sexual relation" and homosexuality is thought of as a threat to logic (39). It is the "death" of reproduction, and this idea is extended into the cultural connotation with the sexual preference:

The author writes "...the cultural fantasy that conjures homosexuality, and with it the definitional importance of sex in our imagining of homosexuality, in intimate relation to a fatal, and even murderous jouissance" (39). The example is given of Andrew Cunanan, a serial killer of strictly gay men. Peter Jay called gay men "doomed," which they are (by society). It's a circular effect that relates back to the cultural relation of death with the end of reproduction, and therefore with homosexuals.