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"Libbing it up" by Michael Bronsky

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Feral:

--- Quote from: Mogul on Mon, Jun 12, 2006, 14:47 ---I find it of certain irony that Mr Bronsky suggests here that US gay rights movement shall "wholeheartedly" argue on behalf of all Americans, while the logical consequence would be that the US gay movement should wholeheartedly argue on behalf of gays worldwide.
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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."

K6:

--- Quote from: Mogul on Mon, Jun 12, 2006, 14:47 ---Michael Bronsky has published an article called "Libbing it up" in The Phoenix. While it is certainly a well-meant attempt to push the US-gays back to more political activity again, I was rather puzzled by the main messages of this sample of gay political thinking 

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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.
We were then asked to change hethro society,as if we had the power to do so.The political left,which was behind that orientation,is now belly up.It had its show stolen by radical Islam.Perhaps it is as well like that,as marxism if it were still relevant to world politics as it was in the 70s would constitute for us a serious political rival,including among gays themselves.Now that marxism is dead,we may safely adopt some of its modus operandi and shed some crocodile tears on socialism,and why not incorporate some measure of socialism in our own political program.

K6

Mogul:
Michael Bronsky has published an article called "Libbing it up" in The Phoenix. While it is certainly a well-meant attempt to push the US-gays back to more political activity again, I was rather puzzled by the main messages of this sample of gay political thinking:

"Five things a retrofitted gay-lib movement should do
 
1) Rather than simply the fight for marriage rights, the gay movement should work with a wide array of groups to ensure that all families — married and non-traditional — will have the economic and social support to be healthy and happy. This could mean anything from working on programs that would train at-home parents for gainful employment, to establishing new tax codes that would reflect the reality of non-coupled families and blood relatives who live together.

2) Gay organizations should collaborate with workers’-rights groups on issues such as comprehensive child-friendly work leave; domestic-partnership rights for straight couples, gay couples, and households of people who are not sexually involved; and greater employee participation, profit sharing, and company management.

3) While always insisting on a strict separation of church and state, gay organizations should work with faith-based groups on economic and social issues in which they are both invested. Working with black churches to preserve federal poverty programs or with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to oppose capital punishment would create points of social and political contact on which both could build.

4) The gay movement should form alliances on comprehensive-health-care issues — including access to all forms of birth control, pre- and postnatal care, revamped Medicare and Medicaid, sexual-health education, and functional (i.e., non-abstinence-based) AIDS prevention.

5) It should urge and support gay and lesbian people to become involved in their immediate communities. Openly gay people serving on school committees, zoning boards, urban-planning committees, crime-watch groups, local diversity-training groups, and social programs such as Meals on Wheels will not only ensure a high degree of queer visibility, but will ensure that issues of specific importance to gay men and lesbians are discussed."

While the idea of gays participating in the general political discours and engaging in various activities (against death penalty, torture, animal mistreatment, environmental pollution etc) is very honorable as such, the suggestion that the gay rights movement shall write all these (important) tasks on its agenda is an obvious mistake of thinking. Gay Rights movement shall care about gay rights, while animal rights movement shall care for animal rights, which of course shall not prevent individual gays from participating in both. Mr Bronsky suggestion to participate in the social life implicates (in a veiled form, though) that currently gays were not equally participating in all kinds of social work or in local communities - which is simply wrong. Many gays are well engaged in all the good work he suggests to be joined - the real problem is the lacking visibility of all those good gay people. They are often (still) afraid to come out to their friends and colleagues and customers, so that the impression is only straight people are socially engaged. I am afraid, Mr Bronsky missed the point.

"The gay-rights movement has hit a brick wall. [..] Will it be a movement that continues arguing, with diminishing success, merely for the rights of its own people — and even at that, only for those who, say, want to formalize a relationship? Or will it argue wholeheartedly, and without reservation, for a broader vision of justice and fairness that includes all Americans? If the movement does not choose the latter course, it runs the risk of becoming not just irrelevant, but a political stumbling block to progressive social change in general."

I find it of certain irony that Mr Bronsky suggests here that US gay rights movement shall "wholeheartedly" argue on behalf of all Americans, while the logical consequence would be that the US gay movement should wholeheartedly argue on behalf of gays worldwide. 

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