Re: [Marxism] Anarchism and gays

[Adam Richmond <adambrichmond@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ireland states:

Indeed, Wilde's critiques of Marx - who had used homosexuality to have
Bakunin thrown out of the First International - were very similar to
those of Bakunin. 

I'm not aware of Marx doing this.  Does anyone know what Ireland is talking 
about?
Adam Richmond
 

--- On Mon, 10/6/08, Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Marxism] Anarchism and gays
To: "Adam Richmond" <adambrichmond@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Monday, October 6, 2008, 7:30 AM

Anarchism and Gays
By: DOUG IRELAND

It may come as a surprise even to gay activists well-read in their 
history that, more than a half-century before the 1950 founding of the 
Mattachine Society as the first, lasting modern association of 
homosexual liberationists, there was a strong and vibrant discourse in 
America which unfailingly defended the right to same-sex love.

It came not from homosexual intellectuals, but from American anarchists.

In the just-published "Free Comrades: Anarchism and Homosexuality in the 
United States, 1895-1917," Terence Kissack, the former executive 
director of San Francisco's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender 
Historical Society, has given us the first book-length study of this 
little-known phenomenon. The work is a vital and important addition to 
gay historiography.

It was thanks to American anarchist writers and propagandists that the 
defense of homosexuality developed in Europe by the likes of Karl 
Ulrichs and Magnus Hirschfeld in Germany and Edward Carpenter and John 
Addington Symonds in England crossed the Atlantic to these shores - at a 
time when no other political movement or notable public figure in the US 
dealt with the issue of same-sex eroticism and love.

"The anarchist sex radicals," Kissack writes, "were interested
in the 
ethical, social, and cultural place of homosexuality within society, 
because that question lies at the nexus of individual freedom and state 
power."

The towering figure of American anarchism, Emma Goldman, was an 
extremely charismatic public speaker who lectured to large audiences all 
over the United States, reaching, she estimated, some 50,000 to 75,000 
people a year. And quite frequently she spoke about homosexuality, 
repeatedly devoting whole lectures to the subject.

A contemporary account of one of those Goldman lectures on homosexuality 
reported: "Every person who came to the lecture possessing contempt and 
disgust for the homo-sexualists [sic] and who upheld the attitude of the 
authorities that those given to this particular form of sex expression 
should be hounded down and persecuted, went away with a broad and 
sympathetic understanding of the question and a conviction that in 
matters of personal life, freedom should reign."

The reason that Goldman and other anarchist figures began to include a 
defense of same-sex love in their discourse toward the end of the 19th 
century was that "homosexuality had become a focus of surveillance and 
regulation by police and other authorities... convictions for the crime 
of sodomy jumped and medical journals began to feature articles on the 
subject..."

full: 
http://gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20096250&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=592782&rfi=6

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