At the same time, that fine month of May precipitated and crystallized, in the chemical sense, ideas which had been around for some time, for example in the works of the Frankfurt School of Adorno and Horkheimer, among others, on authority and the family during the 1930's. The zones of the history of this genealogy, and of its demise, revolve around these two poles : the 1st and 20th centuries.

Christianity at its origins establishes an ideal : virginity and celibacy. To renounce the world, and thus the flesh, is the highest of ideals. But one must need deal all the same with the real world. This is not because of the risk of seeing civilization disappear with this proposition of the extinction of sexuality, a fascinating prospect for a christianity obsessed by hatred of self, of the body and of the world. But rather, it is because, man being what he is, of the probability that this definitive sexual asceticism might not generate a mass following ! Thus did it take but a few neurotic individuals, and communities were built with their guidance, here anachorete, there cenobite, monkish all of them, founded on the principal of the impulse of death.

The machine that judeo-christianity invented to achieve its aims is the family. Paul said so: if one cannot fulfill the ideal of total abstinence (Corinthians, I.7-1) one should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn (Cor., I.7-9). This is marriage in the "classical" sense, i.e., fidelity, monogamy, the sharing of house and home, sexuality confined solely to procreation. Henceforth, the standard marriage, that which pleases the Vatican, conservatives, the Right, Pétain, homophobes, is drawn from this logic, and strictly requires the following conditions to constitute a family : one woman for a man and not two, one man for a woman, no homosexuality (abomination of abominations !), sharing of the prosaic, of daily toil, in minute detail , and a limitation of sexual relations to procreation. Outside of all of this, one can cite the sins of fornication, lust and bestiality for which awaits perpetual damnation and which, in certain times, sent one directly to the stake.

Through good years and bad, this model lasted two millennia. The catechistic imprecations of a Church enjoying a virtual monopoly on education, the repetition of homilies threatening hell at each service, the logic of avowing penitence via spoken confession, and other cogs in the Christian wheel all served to prevent free and open sexuality. But the libido cleared its own path despite it all - from Plautus to Labiche in passing by Molière, cuckolds of both sexes continue to hold their ground unwaveringly and prove that, outside of the family, the body exists also (if not above all).

Thanks to secularization ("dechristianization"), the French Revolution opened up terrain for the advancement of a lay definition of the family: creation of the fraternal companionship of the two sexes (1790), Declaration of the Rights of Women (1791), secularization of one's civil status and law permitting divorce by mutual consent (1792), law on marriage as (reduced to) civil contract (1793), separation of Church and State (1794): all reforms which tear the family away from Church tutelage. We all know the history: Thermidor, Bonaparte, Empire, etc...

End of this hope- advent of the Industrial Revolution. The family returns to the Church's bosom, which allows Owners of the means of production to marry off its children, and thus its names, its fortunes and its capital.

Return of secularization ("dechristianization") with the Revolution of May 1968, which supports abandoning all authority grounded in divine right : end of the owner, the professor, the master and his foreman, but also the father, the spouse, the head of the family who inherited his power from the heavens and whose power is concentrated in the hands of "one" source.

From here succeeds a series of egalitarian and contractual logics. The end of the biological male of divine right and of the family, that ethological territory to which he was "predisposed", is accompanied by molecular revolutions, to use Felix Guattari's terms, while Jean-François Lyotard speaks of libidinal economy and dispositions of urges; Gilles Deleuze of "desiring machines" and of rebellion in flux ; René Schérer of passionate attractions; Raoul Vaneigen of the construction of a life of passion ; and finally Foucault of The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self. These represent the genius and fecundity of 1968 thought, and are indispensable for conceiving of the postmodern family.

What do all these strands of thought have in common? The radical dissociation of that which Paul and Christianity combine: heterosexuality, fidelity, monogamy, cohabitation, procreation. Each of these realms become independent, and autonomous: the family, in the classical sense, implodes. Birth of a postmodern version, characterized by migratory sexual practices, possibility of multi-sexual arrangements, a very Fourier-like usage of "pivotal love" and of "rallying passion" (which finds itself, in Sartre and Beauvoir, expressed as "contingent" and "necessary" love, that old tension between "for one day" and "for all days"), successive or simultaneous polygamy, harmonization of single-hood, and the metaphysics of sterility or of delayed maternity.

Ethical progress goes hand in hand with scientific progress. The two together generate, one fine day, new laws: molecules which permit the invention of birth control pills, thanks to Lucien Neuwirth (glory be rendered unto him), as well as to Simone Veil, who both worked against their constituencies, but for History!, the occasion being an ontological revolution: dissociate sexuality from natural determinism, then recognize in it a certain cultural voluntarism.

The laws on contraception make possible a playful, joyous, free and contractual sexuality, without fear of the punishment of an unwanted pregnancy. So that's why Aunt Yvonne wasn't interested in all of that...

Love and sexuality no longer have anything to do with a life-long engagement, the obligation to found a family, to marry and live together: they become instead forms of possibly joyous inter-relations of beings and of bodies. It is here where homosexuality proposes a possible variation on the same theme. Now, for a longtime, homosexuality signified pure sexuality, because it was naturally dissociated from procreation. Henceforward, however, advances in genetics and/or legislation permitting adoption render possible a cultural construct - that of a homo-parental family.

Heterosexual marriage not being more natural, one recognizes, than marriages between animals? (or) than its homosexual forms?; the grumps are going to have to find some other reasons for being against...

Why refuse for gays what we authorize for heterosexuals? The possibility to have, and then educate, children? For the clergy, certain psycho-analysts, the fundamentalists, a large part of the electorate on the Right, and Lionel Jospin and a few of his circle as reinforcements, these homophobes refuse to consider that transgenetics now allow for the transformation of the family into a domain of clear and lucid contracts where desire, sentiment, and a yearning to build a happy existence prevails over all other religious or moral consideration infected with "moraline," to use Nietzsche's word.

Post-modern, no longer nuclear but rather, molecular, the family which is being invented and with which one experiments, sometimes awkwardly, before our very eyes, now has at its disposal in vitro fertilization, sperm and egg banks, surrogate mothers, post-menopausal motherhood, efficient contraception, and medically safe abortions which allows it to master, absolutely, its destiny. The forms of life of this new family, which extend from all of these possibilities, remain to be determined, so that interrelations are less under the spell of religious and social norms, and based more solely on those of freely elective affinities.

This veritable existential construction site was not so long ago opened up to the machete by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir (read or re-read Adieux : A Farewell to Sartre by the latter) then Jean-Toussaint and Dominique Desanti (read or re-read La liberté nous aime encore ), whose lives as couples were philosophical and existential constructs! That after the time of explorations might come the time of experimentations, the reign of each and all. For the content of life is not filled out by a powerful third party, that of Tribe, Community, Church, State. It is built by one's own hands.

Warning to food-lovers: the dish only goes by once.