General Forum > Politics
"Libbing it up" by Michael Bronsky
Mogul:
--- Quote from: K6 on Tue, Jun 13, 2006, 01:09 ---Modern heterosexuals themselves no longer adhere to the institution of marriage.And my sympathies - including my political ones - go to them rather than to those middle class suburbian gays who dwell on the gay marriage issue,which I find a bit too much conservative and old fashionned in the context of the 21st century.
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I stay with this - in Diaspora, we need equal rights to make a choice - even if this means for some the right to make the wrong choice (for some). You may condemn the institution of marriage, but you must agree that homosexuals must have the same rights to become equally happy or equally unhappy in their suburb one-family homes with a carport and a labrador on the carpet.
--- Quote from: Feral on Tue, Jun 13, 2006, 02:29 ---While searching for something else, I came upon this wonderful essay that bears somewhat upon this discussion. While it is disconcerting to see my own views so clearly set out in someone else's essay, it's also rather comforting to be able to quote someone else for a change.
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A wonderfull essay, indeed! :!! I am most sure that becoming slightly louder than usual can make wonders even at private level - the people are simply shoked when a quite, polite and decent man turns very angry at something they have said. I have used this tactics 2 or 3 times in my personal environment - it proved more effective, than all decent appeals to people's sense of justice and understanding. Most people do not like to become subject of anger and dissense (or possible verbal or physical attack), while they do not mind the least to abuse kind and decent people.
Feral:
While searching for something else, I came upon this wonderful essay that bears somewhat upon this discussion. While it is disconcerting to see my own views so clearly set out in someone else's essay, it's also rather comforting to be able to quote someone else for a change. It rather goes without saying that I am in strong agreement with Lars Eighner's entire essay, though I quote only a portion of it. It was originally published in the Advocate on February 18, 1988.
--- Quote ---What is Wrong With the Gay Movement
First, too many of us are too nice.
The theory of the current gay movement seems to be to present articulate, reasonable, and well-scrubbed men and women to the American public. Miss Manners tactics will give us the moral high ground and shame the majority into being kinder to us. Public indignation will rescue us.
Does anybody believe claptrap like that? Evidently so. That is exactly the basis of four of six points in "Waging Peace," a supposed battle plan for the gay movement (Marshall K. Kirk and Erasetes Pill, Christopher Street, Issue 9:5).
History seems to suggest the nice-person approach can work. That is an illusion. When the oppressor must negotiate, he chooses to negotiate with the nice people, and the nice people get the Nobel prizes. But nice people win only when there are less-nice people on the scene.
Dr. King succeeded only because there were also a Huey Newton, a Black Panther party, and a hell of a lot of angry people in the streets with torches. The British were impressed with Gandhi's humility only because otherwise they would have had to deal with far-less-humble people.
That is to take nothing away from Dr. King and Gandhi. A movement needs both carrots and sticks. We have plenty of carrots. We need more sticks.
Second, whales do not vote.
Gay people are in the minority. That is a fact. One way of achieving political results when you are in the minority is to form coalitions with other minorities. That is political reality.
But coalitions are supposed to be two-way streets. The object is not to be on the good side of every good issue. The object is to secure gay rights.
The fallacy in the Gays to Save the Whales movement is that whales do not vote. You see plenty of Gays to Save the Whales banners at pro-whale rallies. You never see Whale Lovers to Save the Gays at pro-gay demonstrations.
It is the same story of no quid pro quo with the antinuke movement, the safe contraception movement, the pro-Sandinista movement (doesn't anyone remember what happened to gays under Castro?), and the holistic health movement (which seems to doubt that gay sex is organic). And, unfortunately, the same one-way street too often characterizes our relations with black movement and the women's movement.
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Note that the article "Waging Peace" (the full title of which is "Waging Peace: A Gay Battle Plan to Persuade Straight America") is fundamentally the same text as the article "The Overhauling of Straight America" by the same authors that is reprinted here.
As a minority, the gay people very often require the assistance of tactical allies. There must, however, be some sense employed when dealing with them. The whole object of alliances, of forming coalitions, is to get something in return. Rather than heeding calls from the Left for a closer union (or worse, issuing such calls ourselves), the gay people really ought to be re-evaluating all of the layers of political associations they have built up over the years. Some of them, perhaps many of them, are useful and should be kept, even strengthened. Upon examination though, many will be revealed to be useless wastes of effort.
K6:
--- Quote from: Mogul on Tue, Jun 13, 2006, 00:33 ---;D I have a friend in the age of 60, he is an old-fashioned communist and my most beloved contrahent on social issues. Whenever we come to talk about the gay rights movement as it is now - with gay marriage etc - he is critisizing the burgois mindset of our leading activists. In particular, he criticizes them for their strive to gain the same rights to enter the reactionary institution of marriage, instead of fighting for destruction of this institution. Ironically, he himself takes advantage of all the financial benefits offered to him by his heterosexual marriage - while at the same time denouncing the work done by LSVD-folks on behalf of gays.
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I entirely agree with your communist friend as for the institution of marriage: that institution should be abolished.It never inspired me any other sentiment but contempt.Where it should be abolished however constitutes a matter for discussion.Modern heterosexuals themselves no longer adhere to the institution of marriage.And my sympathies - including my political ones - go to them rather than to those middle class suburbian gays who dwell on the gay marriage issue,which I find a bit too much conservative and old fashionned in the context of the 21st century.Of course,your communist friend isn`t gay.If he were,he would never have married heterosexually.
K6
Mogul:
--- Quote from: K6 on Mon, Jun 12, 2006, 18:21 ---You have here,my good friend,a sample of gay radical political thinking as it existed about at the time of your birth,a genuine museum artefact.
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;D I have a friend in the age of 60, he is an old-fashioned communist and my most beloved contrahent on social issues. Whenever we come to talk about the gay rights movement as it is now - with gay marriage etc - he is critisizing the burgois mindset of our leading activists. In particular, he criticizes them for their strive to gain the same rights to enter the reactionary institution of marriage, instead of fighting for destruction of this institution. Ironically, he himself takes advantage of all the financial benefits offered to him by his heterosexual marriage - while at the same time denouncing the work done by LSVD-folks on behalf of gays. The left may have right with their ideas about marriage, burgoise etc - but it is as well true that if we give up our struggle for equal rights, straight people would simply continue the - highly theoretical - discussion for the next 100 years while gay people will remain the sub-humans of our days. We shall not forget what the institute of marriage means for binational couples - without this institution they would have absolutely no chance to live together.
--- Quote from: K6 on Tue, Jun 13, 2006, 00:08 ---The hethro left as I once observed it at close range and in its most stereotypical behavior,didn`t had any real malevolent intention towards gays or homosexuality.Save for one thing,that it intended to use gays exclusively for its own ends,as it saw in the gay individual some ideal type of person it needed for its particular type of political activism: unhappy with his lot,with no family ties and with plenty of spare time to devote the cause of the hethro left.
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No the left was probably not especially hostile towards gays - but I can't really see that there were a particular devotion to our interests. Both Marx and Engels were maybe not exactly homophobes, but certainly they were regarding homosexuals (that time, "Urnings") with contempt and never came to the idea to do something for their rights. In Germany, social democrats never really opposed the gay rights movement, they were rather indifferent, and every progress was actually enforced by the "Green Party" through political extortion.
--- Quote from: Feral on Mon, Jun 12, 2006, 22:59 ---If the gay people shall be fighting for anything, it shall be their own rights and their wn self-interest. History has demonstrated that the 'ros have no interest in even recognizing the inequities that separate the gay people from what is so piously intoned as "the rights of all people."
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I completely agree. If we do not care for ourselves, who will? It is absolutely clear that any specific problem must be addressed as such, and not in the general context of world improvement. It is absolutely idiotical to preach to animal rights activists that they would better spend their time and ressources on starving children in Africa or victims of land mines - while all of these problems require equal attention, it is absolutely unrealistically to demand from an activist (mostly a volunteer) to share his time between many activities. I have the impression that the political Left simply is weldging in their "Weltschmerz" instead of taking real action for something particular. The way to solve the "social question" is, of course, not to persuade gay rights activists to turn to the worker's problems, but to persuade workers (gay and straight) to get involved in trade unions etc. Certainly, gay businessmen shall see the proletarians as brothers - if they are gay proletarians and gay issues are concerned.
We also desperately need "professional gays" - in the straight world they are called "politicians". Straights spend hundreds of millions of Dollars/Euros for their politicians, whereas our people snort at gays who give up their learned professions and devote most of their time to gay rights lobbying or gay research. How idiotical is such an attitude of discarding our own group interests?
K6:
--- Quote from: Feral on Mon, Jun 12, 2006, 22:59 ---This is the problem of the Left, especially in America, but also worldwide. They insist in their heterosexual arrogance that the gay movement must dissolve itself into the concerns of all people, by which the Left always and inevitably means "all str8 people." Gay concerns are to be swept aside until later, or set aside indefinitely. Another example can be found here.
If the gay people shall be fighting for anything, it shall be their own rights and their own self-interest. History has demonstrated that the 'ros have no interest in even recognizing the inequities that separate the gay people from what is so piously intoned as "the rights of all people."
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The hethro left as I once observed it at close range and in its most stereotypical behavior,didn`t had any real malevolent intention towards
gays or homosexuality.Save for one thing,that it intended to use gays exclusively for its own ends,as it saw in the gay individual some ideal type of person it needed for its particular type of political activism: unhappy with his lot,with no family ties and with plenty of spare time to devote the cause of the hethro left.The later didn`t had any real intention to change the balance of power in society and with respect to sexual orientation.It must be said that the hethro left succeded in recruiting many gays who fell for its utopias,as far back as in the 30s and to the point of enrolling gays as spies for the Soviet Union.I was for my part certainly fascinated by the methods of political action,propaganda and organisation of the left which I studied with zeal.But I was too cynical to believe in its utopian or humanitarian ideals.In matters of political litterature,I had beside found myself in contact with such characters like Machiavelli or Bismark,before I read even a line of Karl Marx.
K6
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