Deciphering Halperin

Halperin's Essay "Is There a History of Sexuality" is well researched in a style he is enamored with, chiefly his own. It is equally apparent he relishes rhetorical queries embellished with multi syllabic nouns it takes a thesaurus to translate. While Halperin defines sexuality as an essence akin to an entity, it is politics which define society's narrow minded edicts and mores.
For instance, in E. m. Forster's Maurice, familial expectational compasses map out pre-ordained destinies for Forster's initially compliant characters, Maurice and Clive. Both are educated, after tutors in an all boys school where same gender adoration is tolerated, even expected until perceptions, the glean of society's discerning eye flutter to scorn if worships embryo of innocence births Love's lust. As in Halperin's example of superior over subordinate, it is the proverbial "non-citizen" so to speak,Maurice to Clive's monies status' who is extricated from grace (school) as the deviant, innocent is the adolescent/youth-man whose ancestral genealogy heralds gilded merits which middle to poor classes except as their due. As Maurice and Clive delve deeper into heights deemed shameful, it is Clive the atheist, and non-conformist, who in a psychosis breakdown claims himself cured of this sin of no sin. Enamored of women, first Maurice's sister Ada, then marriage to another, Maurice the prideful snob endures heartbreak to love again with Scutter an "inferior" a subordinate, distrustful and untrustworthy, yet the impetus for Maurice's journey to self revelation. He is saved though never realizing how Clive loved others, how Clive deceived himself about God, and how Clive will continue to delude himself and his bride, while Maurice dons a mans skin only to find there is no place for him, unfit for Scutters world, ostracized from his own as apologizing to his family he learns he is tolerated to disliked by his mother and sisters. Compared so often to his ordinary father, he has been groomed to fill an unexceptional life. In this way, Forster prepares the perceived for the exceptional. While the Scutters, the subordinates understand which path the unerring compass ordains.