"Queer" IS a sexual identity.

This rankles. As far as I can follow it, the reasoning is, “1) Israel cynically employs gay rights to sanitize their imperial project (they do), so 2) to mark myself in opposition to those imperial politics, I identify as queer, not gay, so 3) queer is not a sexual identity.”

To my mind, in the end, this is incoherent. FWIW, when I call myself queer, it IS a sexual identity. At its root, the word simply means I don't conform to society's expectations of my gender (in my case by being sexually attracted to men). All the other stuff, the culture, the politics, the choices about what to wear, where to live, the forming of communities, are born of the fact of our gender nonconformity, which brings us together, usually in opposition. Our existence is political, whether we espouse or act on those politics or not. Our gender nonconformity makes our existence political, but it is not one and the same as our politics.

I go back and forth between calling myself gay and queer. Why in the world would I feel like I had to give up "gay" with its long, rich, beautiful history, just because someone is using it for a bad purpose?