Re: marxists & gay liberation

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 02:16 PM 4/22/96 -0400, you wrote:

>
!.  A: It is difficult for me to see how it could have advanced the socialist
>movement to criminalize homosexuality in 1934.  I suspect it was a mistake.
>
>Q: So then you admit that Stalin was a counter-revolutionary, bloodthirsty
>psychopath, destroyer of the legacy of Lenin, etc., etc.?




>Furthermore, I don't pretend to have a clear idea of how the situation looked
>from the standpoint of the Soviet Union in 1934.  It may have seemed much
>more rational to repress whatever form "gay liberation" was taking in the
>Soviet Union at that time -- even though it may still have been wrong to do
>so.  In any event, your own concern for gay liberation seems to me to be no
>more than a thinly veiled cover for your real concern -- attacking revolution
>and attacking the working class.



>As for homophobia/heterosexism -- I do indeed think that the question of
>sexual liberation as posed by the formulation "gay liberation" is problematic,
>in that it accepts the category of gay/straight which, as we all know, is
>even more socially constructed than the category of race, and proceeds
>to make this opposition central to the question of personal and political
>identity.  Did this keep me from participating in the "gay rights" march here
>in Gainesville last summer?  No.  But that could just be my Stalinist devious-
>ness, I guess.
>
>Another problem I have is with the assumption implicit in much "gay
>liberation" rhetoric that same-sex intercourse is somehow more "free"
>or "liberating" than heterosex.  A substantial section of gay male
>culture, for instance, is at least as viciously anti-woman -- if not more
>so -- than much of straight culture.
>
>>Gays like Hershfeld in Germany and Edward Carpenter
>>in England saw no difference between the movemnt
>>for socialism and that for tolerance in the field of sexuality.
>>Much the same pertains for feminism by the  way.
>
>I'm all for "tolerance in the field of sexuality."  At the same time, let's
keep
>all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about the USSR 1934 at a reasonable
>level.
>
>>Since the seventies, however, gays have turned not to
>>Marxists for ideas but to Michel  Foucault.
>
>Yes, the reluctance of the mainstream gay movement to dissassociate
>itself from pederasts is disappointing, to say the least.  What are you
>doing about this?



We now have three replies form  Maoists/Stalinists.  Olaechea commands  my
respect.  He is a straight out enemey.  For  him Stalin was right tout
court.   His position is that gays should have been criminalised and because
it was done it must have been a good thing for the state.

However  much to my personal sorrow Chris B.' tactics were much more
dissembling.  He wondered about "freedom" and "queer theory".  All in all
his reply was a piece of tortured evasion.

Now the arch equivocator himself turns up as Matt D.  His tactic is to use a
mock dialog to  build a straw opponent and then knock him down.  Yet his
tactics betray him.  He cannot stop himself bringing up "pderasty". I
presume  he means paedophilia. He  says that it is disappointing that the
mainstream gay press does nothing about this.  He is of course wrong but the
slander will stick.  There are plenty of examples of gays condmening
paedophilia.  There are also example of gays defending paedophila.  But
there are equal amounts of straights in both categories.

I tried to answer Chatterjee with as much honesty and restraint that I
could  on these same questions.  So go to the archives, Mr. D.

Now the other slander - because I raise the question of gay liberation and
the criminalisation of homosexuality in Russia in 1934 I am anti-working
class.  This is a despicable piece of shit.  It is similar to saying that as
did the Nazis and Stalinists that homosexuals are decadent.  I neither
apologise for my politics nor my sexuality.

Once this list was a place where people's good faith was assumed.  The PCP
camarilla changed all that.  What is worse the "moderate" Maoists/
Stalinists like Ehbar and Chris B. have gone along with the dragging down of
this list. In fact it would not have been possible without them.


A final run through a crop of slanders.

No where have I said that gay sex is better than hetero sex.  I have on the
contrary insisted that we debate sexuality and the politics of emancipation
not sex acts.

Nor have I ever intimated that I believe the gay community is without
faults. Of course they often bear like any oppressed minority traces of the
consciousness of the oppressor.

Matt d. the great emancipator asks me to keep the wailing and gnashing about
the USSR in 1934 down to a reasonable level.  Who decides what is a
reasonable level?  Gays or Stalinophiliacs?  Who decides discussion of the
extermination of the Jews under Hitler or their persecution under Stalin is
at a reasonable level?

I also asked about the criminalisation of abortion in Stalin's Russia in
1936.  D. says  "see above".  This piece of evasion  won't do. How can the
interests of a Marxist state be reconciled with the banning of abortion.  It
can't.  But are we supposed to be reasonable about this too?

Charlotte still hasn't spoken.  Nor  Godena. Nor Gina?  or is she too busy
with the two lines?

But all this is pointless.  Stalinophilia is simply not debatable.  Nor is
it particularly relevant to today's world.  In these post modern times
perhaps we should all gather round and gaze at the spectacle of the debate
about the two lines etc.  We could have a campaign to get people to join
this list so that they observe folk straight out of a time warp. Like where
else in the world could you find real live screaming, denouncing, spitting,
biting fossils?


Gary



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