[Marxism] Re: Gay discussion

[Ed George <edgeorge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gary McLennan says: ‘you straights cannot condemn gay activists for not 
taking up the wider struggle if you are not with us in our struggles.’ 
Nail. Smacked. Right on head.

The point being that the deeper the understanding that the Cuban 
Revolution has of lesbian and gay liberation the stronger the 
Revolution. ‘A nation that oppresses another can never itself be free’ 
is, of course, a profound truth that applies not *just* to the national 
question.

Speaking of which, Phil Ferguson, for whom I have a great deal of time, 
aspires to a world in which ‘terms like gay and straight have faded from 
use because everybody just gets on with their own thing.’ Quite. The 
point, however, is how you get there. I remember an anarchist friend of 
mine once literally crying out in exasperation, ‘But when will people 
stop defining themselves in terms of nationality and get on with 
fighting the bosses!’ To which I replied: ‘When big nations stop 
oppressing little ones.’

And it is the case that when big nation socialists have to ask 
themselves why it is that small nations are so hung up on their national 
existence they have to admit that there is a blind spot in their 
knowledge of oppression that will only be filled once they *learn* from 
the small nations’ experience of oppression, an experience that, by 
definition, the big nation will not experience.

And *precisely* the same must be said of straights and lesbians and gays

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