The economic, tied to the reproductive, is necessarily linked to the reproduction of heterosexuality. It is not that nonheterosexual forms of sexuality are simply left out, but that their supression is essential to the operation of that prior normativity. This is not simply a question of certain people suffering a lack of cultural recognition by others, but, rather, is a specific mode of sexual production and exchange that works to maintain the stability of gender, the heterosexuality of desire, and the naturalization of the family.

Judith Butler: Merely Cultural