Re: [Marxism] Shrunken dreams: the retreat of gay lib

[Adam Richmond <adambrichmond@xxxxxxxxx>]

While he has some interesting points, this is basically a radical moralist's 
condemnation of reality. Gay people OUGHT to be more radical.  But in fact they 
aren't today.  Perhaps they will in the future.  But with this exclusionary, 
moralistic point of view, the author is unlikely to have a great to offer newly 
militant LGBTs.   It amounts to braying in the wilderness.

Pedagogically Marxist may wish to open an new dialog on the deeper aspects of 
marriage, sex relation, gay oppression, etc. but to insist that gay people 
adopt a cultural radicalism as a condition of successful struggle is a mistake 
in my view.  

Gay people are  not embracing militarism when they demand equality in 
imperialist armies.  They are demanding equality.  This is an opportunity for 
radicals to join with suddenly quite openly militant people to get rid of an 
obviously archaic rule.  Perhaps they will be open to a greater examination of 
the imperialist occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

The gay liberation movement of the 60s and 70s emerged in a context of general 
rebellion among a wide array of social movements, African Americans, Chicanos, 
Puerto Ricans, women, the student movement, the antiwar movement.  That was the 
Material basis and that the gay radical movement emerged. Subjectively there 
was a cultural radicalism challenging all sorts of social norms. 

Huge gains and many mistakes were made by these 1970s radicals.  I myself wrote 
a letter to Gay Community New denouncing Leonard Matlovich as an imperialist 
stooge during his struggle to crash the military's ban on gays.  I went so far 
as to refuse to speak to him in the tiny town of Guerneville, California where 
we both resided for a while.  Perhaps as a lightening rod, a person of great 
bravery to take on the establishment he might have learned a thing or two about 
the nature of the beast we were both fighting.  And perhaps he might have been 
interested in a devastating critique of capitalist society.  This is where this 
kind of ultraleft moralism takes one.









      
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