Generally put, and commonly understood the State of Love in the West is: boy and girl meet (or sometimes boy and boy, or girl and girl, dependent upon codified legal norms in a given state), they 'fall in love' with one and other (and no other from here-on-in), they act on their love by disciplining themselves to the codified laws of the state and/or religious norms into a marriage bond, and forsaking Love in this way for all others (think of the Christian religious proscriptions of: "do you take him/her, forsaking all others" or "till death do you part"), they live happily ever after (unless subject to state or religious forms of reversing this process which is initiated on an individual level, that is: the break-up, separation and divorce).

There are two items of note within the State of Love that must be addressed.

First, the legalistic inclusion of homosexual love into the State of Love in some states clearly marks it as part of the rule, part of the State of Love, rather than some sort of bold rupture with established norms. It is not an exception, a fundamental break - whatever the religious and/or political right might think; it does not affirm a truth, but rather merely expands and encompasses more individuals (who do not by this act become subjects) within the State of things. In one sense, legalistic exclusion of groups based on their specific particularities does fundamentally matter: prohibitive laws against homosexuality are reprehensible and must be combated wherever they exist. But inclusion into the State of Love - outside of practical considerations such as pensions and benefits, a right not to be discriminated against or subject to harassment - does not correlate to Love as truth, as the ability to affirm a truth, to become subjects as bearers of a truth. This is why we have separated wholly our discussion into two points - affirmations and particularisms.

Second, and this is of fundamental importance: there is no relation to love under the State of Love, and fidelity to Love as a truth. Through the latter one becomes an immortal subject, ones' address is universalizable, and holds absolutely without wavering in ones' fidelity to it ("it is never shattered"), and is part of something that is in excess of oneself through unity with others; with the former, one is regulated, submits to a pre-described definition of love that is particular and filled with proscriptions of various kinds, and most importantly, one does not hold that love with unwavering fidelity. In the State of Love, in the states of the West, the love "commitment" - for it is wholly different from an affirmation which can only be used in reference to a truth - can be broken by individual or "natural" occurrence: break-up or divorce in the first instance; death in the latter. Alain Badiou is fundamentally clear on this point: death/dissolution is never an event, at least with reference to love, and thus bears no relation to a truth.

What becomes clear is that in addition to there being no relation between the State of Love, and Love as a Truth - and I will argue, the Truth - on Badiou's topology of ethics, the State of Love in the West, including those states that recognize homosexual love as being part of it, is an established and proscribed state sanctioned legal-religious ethical Evil. What is posited as an event of love, is really a simulacrum of a possible event, as it is neither universal in address nor conforms to particularities. What is posited as fidelity is contingent, temporary (either till death or break-up), and has built in religious or legal procedures to actualize betrayal. I should note that I am clearly not arguing against the right to divorce or break-up, but identifying a lack of subjective fidelity, that fidelity must be sanctioned and enforced by legal, religious or normative procedures. Finally, the State of Love forces the unnameable, the truth of love, to conform to particularisms and smothers it under layers of rites and norms into a unitary form. In states which recognize homosexual unions, they are subject to the same legalistic framework as their heterosexual counterparts; and in all states, the State of Love is unitary in forcing non-subjects - for they do not affirm a truth - into the model accepted, marked and named by the state or religious particularism in question.