Re: the next wedge issue

[andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- joanna bujes <jbujes@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > As Lou says, a revolutinary party that> Solidarity
is not the logic of an idea. I repudiate
> what Melvin is
> saying because I don't agree with him....not because
> PEN-L solidarity
> (whatever that means) requires that I do so.
>
> Joanna: There's not much love lost between Melvin
and me.
> But, it seems to me
> that the whole point of these list-servs is to
> engage in reasoned
> dialogs with people one doesn't totally agree with.
> How else to re-build
> the left? How else?
>

Right. Melvin offers an intelligent statement of a
position that was once widely held on the left,
probably less so today, that any organizing and
agitation that does not go to class and property
issues is a mere distraction. I believe that is what
he is saying, that the gay liberation movement is a
distraction at best because it doesn't address class.

That is not a popular position on whatever is left of
the left any more, and was not even popular in its
pure form back when it was more widely held. For
example, virtually every left organization that I can
think of has always opposed racial discrimination and
supported, e.g., black liberation under its various
names over the years. The "distraction" argument has
tended to be addressed to women's liberation and gay
liberation, I believe, and less so than formerly. Why
might that be? What explains the difference? That is
not a rhetrocal question.

One thing that is sometimes said is that women's and
gay liberation are merely bourgeois struggles for
bourgeois rights, equal treatment with others,
nondiscrimination -- but not against exploitation and
class privilege. But insofar as this is true, which is
limited, isn't that also true of black liberation? And
in fact it is not simply true. Just as the black
liberation/civil rights/etc. movement has had (to
simplify drastically), Booker T Washington
accomodationist winds and WEB DuBois militant wings,so
all these other movements have had too -- gay
liberation as well.

Two things should be said, though. One is that I
believe, and many on the left do, that reformist goals
that promote equality and humanity are worth fighting
for even if they do not have directly revolutionary
content. For example, it was worth the fight to get
women the vote -- and blacks too -- even if all that
got them was the right to vote for one or another
bourgeois candidate. The second thing is that if
improving the lives of people who are unjustifiably
oppressed and marginalized requires a further
justification, it does tend to overcome divisions
among the workers in the long run, even if it is
divisive at the time -- as suffrage was.

Now all of this is pretty measured. In addition to
offering a defense of a reasonable though in my view
misguided view, Melvin has expressed some views that
many would regard as prejudiced. While he says, and I
agree, that it is none of society's business what
consenting adults do in the bedroom, he says he finds
homosexuality "abhorrent." If that just means he
doesn't find the idea of engaging himself in that
behavior attractive, there can be no argument, but
other things he says suggest that he thinks something
stronger. He says that homosexuality is strongly
correlated to child-molestation, which I believe to be
a complete canard; he says that it is a sign of social
decadence, which is pretty hard to square with, for
example, the Golden Age of Greece. But these remarks
suggest that he thinks it is a bad thing. That does
not mean that he wants it banned or people who
practice it to be abused, but surely it would
stigmatize people to say that how they express their
love and lust is "abhorrent" -- not just, perhaps, to
Melvin? -- and "decadent." And surely stigmatizing
people for harmless consensual practices among adults
is not what the left wants.

jks




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