Inside...
Our writers take on the far right’s attack on the civil rights of LGBT people through anti-gay marriage laws and customs that condemn their families to second-class status. They analyze the class basis for far-right maneuver and also for unity in the fight back. This issue also features an interview with long-time gay activist and founder of Pride at Work, Howard Wallace who discusses the importance of coalitions and the role of lesbian and gay movements in the struggle for gay rights. An essay
on Harry Hay not only deals with the tensions in his relationship with the Communist Party (Hay ended up leaving) but also points to his view of a gay culture based on sexual orientation as a basis of solidarity – both personal, community and beyond. Key to Hay’s concept was the right of LGBT people to self-definition on their own terms. This includes the basic right to express their desires and sexuality as much as anyone else. A book review essay details the specific struggle of transgender people for visibility and solidarity with the progressive movement. In an interview African American LGBT activist LaQuetta Nelson talks about the need to build the movement to oppose anti-gay violence. Two essays deal with the history of the struggle, from the enormously important ACTUP movement to other related efforts, to force the government to deal with the crisis of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. To wrap up, a historical study of the lesbian and gay struggle in the German Democratic Republic shows the difficulties
encountered by LGBT people in that country.
A common thread throughout this issue is the recognition of the importance of the LGBT question to unity in defeating the far right. When George W. Bush defended Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania after Santorum lashed out at lesbians and gays as sexual deviants unworthy of full equality, Bush laid the groundwork for one of the far right’s most open and sinister attacks on democratic rights and working-class unity. Bush announced this attack in his State of the Union address last January in which he launched his campaign to ban gay marriage with a constitutional amendment. If Bush and the fundamentalists’ control of state power continues, their anti-democratic policies won’t be limited to attacks on lesbians and gays.
Thus, in this election year as in years past the struggle for LGBT rights has become a wedge issue. Like the fight against racism and for reproductive rights it must be met head on. Defending gay rights is fundamental to defending democracy.
We hope this issue brings PA and its readers more directly into this important fight. On a self-critical note, it has to be said that while Political Affairs has always formally opposed discrimination, the LGBT question has not always been accorded the respect and status it deserves and our theory didn’t always translate into practice. That this is our first special issue speaks volumes.
There are many sources of this problem. First a tendency in the past to downplay the struggle for democracy generally and to see it as moving away from the workers’ class struggle. This relates to basic democratic fights like those of the racially and nationally oppressed minorities or women as well as LGBT struggles.
Secondly, there has been a minimization of this particular issue by placing it in competition with other democratic struggles. In the past, this expressed itself in ranking particular democratic questions giving priority to some over others. “It’s important” some say, “but not as important as the African American or Latino or women’s movement.” This ranking leads to competition for attention opening the movement to division. This has caused much of our work to lag behind.
A third issues that feeds this problem is the influence of homophobia. In fact this question has been historically viewed through the lens of dominant bourgeois culture and that has influenced Communist and workers’ movements. It has to be said that there has been a strain in the Marxist movement in the past that has seen sexual orientation as “deviant behavior” affecting upper-middle class strata. It has been seen as an issue of lifestyle rather than orientation.
It is worth considering whether or not there is an ideological basis for these problems. Is there adequate appreciation for the dynamics of the all-class character of LGBT struggles? In this regard, Hay’s concept of the emergence of a lesbian and gay culture must be considered and discussed. Hay advanced the idea that lesbians and gays represented an oppressed cultural minority. How is this community defined? Had the Communist movement accepted this idea would its attitude to its relative weight in the struggle for democracy have been different? Still more, what assessment can be made of how it came into being, its forms of development and attributes?
In this discussion, important ideological concepts come to the fore: homophobia and heterosexism; the need for sensitivity and acknowledgement of the impact of the dominant heterosexual capitalist culture on the LGBT minority with all its discriminatory implications.
The LGBT question can be seen in two dimensions. First is the issue of human rights. In parts of the country over the last few years, civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights activists fought for and won protections of a broad range of rights in local political struggles. As a result, local entities all over the country passed human rights ordinances that guaranteed non-discrimination rights for people of color, for women, for the poor and for LGBT people. These victories required complex and politically astute multi-strata and multi-racial people’s coalitions at odds with far-right elements almost always supported by capitalist donors. In addition to human rights ordinances, LGBT activists have fought for hate crime legislation that would require federal law enforcement officials to record sexual orientation-based hate crimes. Hate crimes laws are opposed by the far right. Access to medical care, housing and other basic services for LGBT people has also raised key questions related to the human rights denied because of sexual orientation. At every point the specific measure has either been fought or undermined by the corresponding corporate interest. For example, in the struggle by gay people for access to the health care system, pharmaceuticals and insurance companies fight to protect their profits always at the cost of human life.
Secondly, intermingled with this is the far right’s use of differences to divide democratic forces as a whole and the workingclass more specifically. While many straight people might regard the ineffectual Clinton policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” as necessary for unity, this viewpoint serves only to pressure a section of the democratic forces to hide themselves or to withdraw demands for equality. This attitude does not create equality now so why would it produce equality in the future? A useful model for thinking about this level of this question is the AFL-CIO constituency group Pride at Work. At its best, this group has the ability to raise issues of equality and democracy around the LGBT question within the trade union movement as well as in the larger society. It does so with the idea of maintaining and strengthening the unity of the class and community forces required to win victories.
If the Bush administration is to be replaced and a qualitative victory is to be won over the far right in the struggle against monopoly capital and for socialism, the LGBT question must be understood. At its base is the central struggle for unity. Without unity around the LGBT question (in the context of broad and diverse coalitions), the far right will continue to rule and the general struggle will not proceed. This question shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought; it must become a major concern of the coalition and union work we participate in. If there is an LGBT component to anti-war, anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-sexist, worker rights struggles, we must take the lead in finding it and building unity around it. If we accomplish this, we will find that the liberation of all humans is bound up with the struggle for the democratic rights of LGBT people.
Features:
Whose Family Values?
By Adam Tenney
Massachusetts Legalizes Gay Marriage
By Rev. David Carl Olson
ACTUP Breaks the Silence
By Joel Wendland
Socialism and Gay Rights: The Case of the GDR
By Victor Grossman
Follow the Money: AIDS Funding and the Bush Administration
By David Scondras
Harry Hay: The Great Forerunner
By Norman Markowitz
Also poetry, a marxist quiz, letters and much more...
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