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Published in 1983, John D’Emilio’s paper “Capitalism and Gay Identity” takes a historicist approach to homosexuality, situating its emergence within the history of capitalism and drawing out the consequences for the homosexual movement. The present text begins by distinguishing D’Emilio’s program from two other historicist positions, those of the sociology of deviance and the Foucauldian analysis of power. It then shows that D’Emilio’s paper opened the way for a politics of becoming and contradiction, which is attentive to the historical conditions of possibility for more just forms of conjugality and parenthood, and to the emotional insecurity involved in deviant intimacies. D’Emilio’s paper raises three questions: the number of homosexuals, the limitations of thinking in terms of identity, and the specificities of homosexual ways of life. Beyond the question of homosexuality as such, it discusses the implications of D’Emilio’s analysis for our understanding of gender relations and alternative forms of family life as current political issues.