Gay American Indian Men's Mobility and Sexual Sedentarism in the United States Census Rules of Residence

Abstract

The mobility of gay American Indian men in and of itself challenges broader social agendas attaching sexuality to a particular political category, such as same-sex marriage. Having same-sex marriage and partnering recognized on the United States census fulfills the activist goals of a gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer political majority at the same time that it produces a normalization of sedentary sexuality. Sexual mobility, often associated with the spread of HIV/AIDS and promiscuity, is politically at odds with a progressive political agenda seeking marriage equality. The sedentarianism imposed on gay sexuality by the United States census, and specifically on the residential patterns of gay male American Indians, has the effect of further excluding a population whose sexual and cultural mobility are already and always non-normative. In this article, I seek to examine the ways in which sexuality, culture, and disease converge to produce a particular set of orientations toward mobility among...