Marxists and Gay liberation

[redprophet]

I think the leaders should be chastised by the rank and file for their failure in this matter.  I am also preparing some mental arguments as the basis of an article on the matter.

Mir is correct that Marxists should not simply tag liberal causes onto their agenda to look popular (like the Workers' World Party is doing here in the states).  We should provide a socialist perspective, showing how the oppression of gays is caused by the capitalist system's repressive sexual norms and its focus on property as the basis of human relationships.

[Volkov]

Originally posted by Irish Militant
Socialist Appeal/Woods group manages to produce thousands of words about the "pedagogics of Vygotsky", pamphlet length articles marking 400 years since the publication of Don Quixote, enormous pieces about the "revolutionary essence of Fela Kuti's music", a five part series on British poetry and the French revolution and endless reports of Alan Woods speaking to small meetings. Nothing wrong with any of that, excepting perhaps what appears to be a rather dubious worship of your leader and the occasionally ponderous and grandiose tone. But you can hardly expect anyone to believe, in this context, that an inability to come up with a single thing to say about gay liberation except for one crass remark is due to pressing priorities elsewhere! Or are you seriously telling us that the 400th anniversary of Don Quixote is a more pressing concern for socialists than the oppression of gay people?

I find it offensive and absurd that you accuse me of "Woods Worship."  That is utterly nonsensical, and I am not a personality cultist (note:  I chose my username when I did not know that Trotsky had a grandson by the name of Esteban Volkov).  I could just as easily call you a Taaffe worshipper.  You don't see me doing that, now do you?  And again, the work, Don Quixote does not seem to be taken as a central point of Petty-Bourgeois ideology, now does it?  We stand for the emancipation for the proletariat, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, etc.  I don't know about Woods and such, but I believe that it is an obvious fact that we stand for equality between homosexuals, bisexuals, and straights.

There are thousands and thousands of articles on the IDOM and related sites. They give your views on every conceivable subject, from the important to the utterly trivial. With one very obvious exception.

I think that socialism will quickly resolve the gay rights issue in a progressive manner rather quickly.

As I said in my first post, this is not an issue which has always been grasped by the socialist and workers movements. It has taken time, and struggle by gay socialists, for socialist organisations to come to an understanding of gay liberation and its part in the struggle for socialism.

That is probably because in Marx's day, homosexuals were not so open about their sexual orientation (some nations in Europe were very reactionary at those times)

Not all that long ago it was commonplace for socialists to completely ignore the issue or even to hold actively homophobic views, including the idea that homosexuality was a capitalist degeneracy and would disappear under socialism.

Can you prove this statement?  I have heard of Stalinists being homophobic (I have heard that it was a crime under Stalinism in the USSR to be a homosexual;  8 years in prison or something like that.  Do you know of anything on this???).  I don't remember anything about hearing Marxists opposing such rights.

Those views have mostly disappeared from our movement. Only the Woods group seems determined to continue the backward attitudes of the past by simply pretending that homosexuality and homophobia do not exist. What are the views of other supporters of the Woods group/Socialist Appeal on this?

Please don't put words in our mouths.  Woods and Grant (and neither have we) ever taken up anti-homosexual stances.  If you are going to oppose us fine, but don't resort to making false claims.  Where did Woods and Grant say that they did not exist?  It seems that Grant (his remark on Petty-Bourgeois nonsense) was mainly about being annoyed with how so many leftist groups seemingly only want to have gay rights;  those groups don't really elaborate;  they almost seem to think (some of them) that most of the world's problems will disappear when gay rights and such are granted.

Gay rights is an important issue, but it is one of the "smaller" ones that will probably be resolved rather quickly once capitalism disappears (most of the hostility toward gay rights over here in the USA seems to come from the reactionary religious fundamentalists).  Those that are going to be attracted to Marxism before many others are going to be those that already have a good deal of progressive ideas in their heads.  I think that for such progressive basises, whether weak or strong in such people, will make it clear that we are not opposed to gay rights or anything like that.  Why haven't Woods and Grant commented on it?  Perhaps Woods is quite busy (he has written some recent books, been to Venezuela, etc.), maybe Grant's old age is hampering him a bit, maybe they think that our standpoint on this issue is already so obvious that a long work on it is not necessary, etc.  I wouldn't declare that we have nothing to say;  I would say that what we have to say about gay rights are, well, obvious and already well-known to progressive-minded people.  It does not take a materialist dialectician to know that there is nothing wrong with granting homosexuals rights.

Not to mention that a lot of people probably don't know about Don Quixote and other such topics of our numerous articles in comparasion to the generally universal agreement amongst those that are progressive that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality.  Afterall, besides neocons and religious fundamentalists, who really opposes gay rights?

I also can't speak for mir, if you are wondering.

[Guerillero]

Gay rights are an issue that don't concern me personally. I don't think gays should be forbidden, it's their business, but the prime focus should be on the liberation of the masses, not the liberation of homosexuals, that is an issue for liberals and revisionists. Like it is written, all such divisiveness arises out of capitalism, once capitalism is destroyed then and only then , can they be fully incorporated into society, when religion no longer has any part to play in politics.
        Concentrating on these minor issues is actually divisive, and shifts focus away from the real goal.

[P.O.U.M]

Can you prove this statement? I have heard of Stalinists being homophobic (I have heard that it was a crime under Stalinism in the USSR to be a homosexual; 8 years in prison or something like that. Do you know of anything on this???). I don't remember anything about hearing Marxists opposing such rights.

I think the film director who made "Ten Days That Shook the World" and "Potemkin" was gay. And had to marry his assistant (female) to fool the stalinist authorities.

Concentrating on these minor issues is actually divisive, and shifts focus away from the real goal.

Agreed. Just the same as feminism, envoirnmentalism, anarchism (:p), racism, ageism, blah blah blah. All important in their own respect. But it also takes focus away from the main goal. All these groups aim for is their own minor objective. As Marxists we need to fight alongside each of these individual struggles while all the time proclaiming the inability of the current system to resolve anything.

As for IDOM not producing anything on about gay rights, well, theres alot of issues affecting the world. Some deserve more immediate attention then others. Im sure theres social issues that need to be dealt with but are not addressed on any CWI site. I do however find it odd that there is not at least one article.

And the asinine comment Grant/Woods cult was uncalled for. Lenin had that same problem back in his day. I do not imply to raise Grant/Woods to the level of Lenin. But in this case of dogmatism and cult personalities, it is near the same. The throwing around of cult, dogmatist and so on.

Because we have our ideas and our leaders, but does not automatically make us a cult! In that case so can the CWI be called a cult, or anyother organization.

[Volkov]

From Irish Militant:

As a final aside, I refer to your organisation as the Wood group for two reasons. In the first place it is a humourous reference to what I regard as the unhealthy attitude to your leading figures which your publications show, but more of this on another thread. Secondly, as far as I am aware your group doesn't normally use any particular name externally and I know that in our entryist days the CWI wouldn't have appreciated other socialists writing about us under that name.

I believe that the overall organization is called the Committee for a Marxist International, if you are wondering.  Given how the CWI seems so hell-bent on looking over our articles and attacking us, I would think that you would have noticed the name by now.  The name is not the "Grant Tendency" as Taaffe asserts.

[Irish Militant]

First a couple of asides on other issues which have come up on this thread:

1) The name CMI doesn't appear on the IDOM website or in your publications. That may well be what you call yourselves internally but it isn't formally acknowledged in public and I presume you have your reasons for that.

2) My problem is not with leadership but with what appears to be an overly reverential attitude towards two of your leaders. I don't think the relentless promotion of their activities, the fawning description of their stature or things like birthday greetings from them are at all appropriate ways for a Marxist organisation to deal with its leading figures. This is all I intend to say about this matter on this thread, but I will come back to it in more detail in a more appropriate one.

[Marxista]

Well maybe you skipped the program of YFIS, where one of the points is fighting against homophobia?

[OUTOFTHENIGHT]

Hi Marxista. Maybe we could have a link to the YFIS point about fighting homophobia.It might not be a full blown polemic which is what I think Irish Militant wants from IDOM but at least it proves your point.

[kimberlysark]

Hi ppl.

"However, socialists also understand that it isn't good enough to put off fighting for women's liberation or an end to racism until "after the revolution". Discrimination and division have to be fought in the here and now as well. It is vital that Marxists intervene into the movement for gay liberation with socialist ideas and a class analysis. We do not simply tail after such movements but instead point to the need to get rid of capitalism."

This is what I think as well.

Those who say that we want the liberation of all humanity, that is a communist society, so we can ignore the oppression of women or blacks or disabled people or gay people in the here and now are just being very ultra-left. You could equally decide from this stupid approach to ignore the economic struggle of a section of workers - why bother? They need communism, not a pay rise!

On the debate - I don't know enough of the details. It is very strange that there are no articles dealing with gay liberation on the In Defence of Marxism website though. For example - gay marriage rights were just granted in Canada. There is a big dispute in Spain currently on this issue. This is a major issue there! It is being used by the conservatives and the church to mobilise against the PSOE government. In the US presidential elections it was a big issue as well.

What leaflet do Socialist Appeal give out at gay pride demonstrations? Maybe if they can get hold of a copy they could post them on here, or on their website.

It's also not enough to just say we support gay liberation. The Lib Dems, Labour, and even the Tories can say this! A transitional programme is needed - linking the struggle for equal rights to a struggle for genuine gay liberation - to the wider class struggle and the need for socialism.

Look at the detail and effort that the Comintern went to in order to draft a programme for blacks. This at a time when they had very few black members! Also - look at the efforts the Bolsheviks went to in order to attract and recruit women. They drew up a carefully worked out programme and produced special material on the question of womens oppression. Didn't they have a newspaper aimed specifically at women? I think I read they did once. Anyway, this was and remains the correct approach to those sections of society who face special oppression.

I think that if Marxists ignore the special oppression of these various groups in society they can lose the opportunity to unite these groups with the wider working class movement. These movements can then become lost to seperatist or totally petit-bourgeois leaders. Black nationalism and petit-bourgeois feminism are examples of this happening. If only Marxists could have won the leadership of these movements. To get Socialism we need working class unity - and that means all sections of the working class - women, blacks, gays, disabled ppl, young ppl, and so on. If you agree with this statement then you can't ignore the oppression of gay people.

I look forward to reading more about the stuggle for gay liberation, both current and historical, on the In Defence of Marxism website shortly!




KS x

[Morag]

Okay, so have any of you actually emailed IDOM and asked about it?

But let's be frank. Gay liberation? Women's liberation? None of this is going to happen in a capitalist society. I live in Canada, where same-sex marriage has actually been legal in most of the country for several years, and I promise you, having all the legal rights as straight people hasn't changed the situation. As for women, even here in Canada, where we have it better than almost anywhere else in the world, still we suffer spousal abuse, unfair labour practices, we are often forced to leave children in daycares, or we can't get an education. This is all caused by capitalism[/b], not because of CMI's stance on gay and women's liberation.

As it turns out, not all non-heterosexual persons are the same. I know plenty gay marxists who didn't feel that same-sex marriage was going to do any good, or were even against it; on the other hand, Hank and Gerald got married last week, and it was a lovely ceremony with Cuban music and good vodka. The only thing that unites the group, generally, is the only real thing that unites most women, and most men: that they are members of the proletariot. To suggest that each group specifically needs to be liberate is an argument with some merit, but we've seen how well this has worked with the seperate liberation of women. I mean, we may have all the legal rights of men, but we aren't equal. Not truly.

Not to say that there aren't seperate concerns in these different groups, but that there are actually so many that common ground has to be found. That common ground is that they are workers. A gay man from China will have very little in common with my bisexual friend here in Canada, but they are both workers.

So,  I'll go back to working for the working-class, not seperated groups within it. ("The people, united, can never be defeated.") Not only that, but liberate the women, the gays, the kids, the minorities, the disabled, and when are we going to celebrate the liberation of the working class? When the straight, white man is liberated... *s*

[OUTOFTHENIGHT]

From this weeks Weekly  Worker

Gays executed
Mahmoud Asgari (16) and Ayaz Marhoni (18) were hanged in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad, in north east Iran on July 19. The islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran enforces sharia law, which dictates the death penalty for gay sex: hanging, stoning, beheading or dropping from a high place.

The teenagers admitted (probably under torture) to having gay sex, but claimed in their defence that many young boys had sex with each other and that they were not aware that homosexuality was punishable by death. Prior to their execution, the teenagers were held in prison for 14 months and severely beaten with 228 lashes. Their length of detention suggests that they committed the so-called offences more than a year earlier, when Mahmoud was 15 and Ayaz was17.

Ruhollah Rezazadeh, the lawyer of the youngest boy (16), had appealed that Mahmoud was too young to be executed and that the court should take into account his tender age. He was quoted by the IRIN news agency as saying that “the judiciary had trampled on its own laws”, explaining that the Iranian courts usually commute death sentences on children to five years jail. Despite his pleas, the supreme court in Tehran ordered Mahmoud to be hanged. Three other young gay Iranians are being hunted by the police in connection with the same so-called crime, but they have gone into hiding and cannot be found. If caught, they will probably also face execution.

News of the two executions was reported by the Iranian Students News Agency on July 19. It stated that they were hung for the crime of sodomy. A later news story by Iran Focus, which claimed to be based on this original ISNA report, said the youths were executed for raping a 13-year-old boy. But the ISNA report does not mention any rape or any 13-year-old boy. A report of the executions on the website of the banned, underground democratic opposition movement, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, also makes no reference to rape.

The allegation of rape may be a trumped-up charge to undermine public sympathy for the youths (a frequent tactic by the islamist regime in Iran). Or it could be that the 13-year-old was a willing participant but that Iranian law (like UK law) deems that no person aged 13 is capable of sexual consent and that therefore even consensual sexual contact is automatically deemed in law to be statutory rape.

The two teenagers are said to have confessed to gay sex. It would be very unusual for anyone in Iran to make such a confession voluntarily, given the violently homophobic nature of the society and the public stigma and shame of admitting to same-sex acts. People who admit to gay sex in Iran risk disownment by their family, possible ‘honour killing’ by neighbours, and jailing, whipping and execution by the state.

The allegations of rape appear to have only surfaced after adverse publicity in the international media and condemnation by human rights groups in Iran and abroad.

It is, of course, possible that the original ISNA report was incomplete and that it inadvertently failed to mention the rape claims. But usually the Iranian authorities openly boast about rapists being hung as a deterrent and to win public sympathy. So if the teenagers were guilty of rape, why was it not mentioned in the original news report? Even if the youths were guilty of rape, public execution of minors is unjustified and extreme.

This is just the latest barbarity by the islamo-fascists in Iran. The entire country is a gigantic prison, with islamic rule sustained by detention without trial, torture and state-sanctioned murder. According to Iranian human rights campaigners, over 4,000 lesbians and gay men have been executed since the ayatollahs seized power in1979.

Altogether, an estimated 100,000 Iranians have been put to death over the last 26 years of clerical rule. The victims include women who have sex outside of marriage and political opponents of the islamist government. Last August, a 16-year-old girl, Atefeh Rajabi, was hanged for “acts incompatible with chastity”.

Britain’s Labour government is pursuing friendly relations with this murderous regime, including aid and trade. We urge the international community to treat Iran as a pariah state, break off diplomatic relations, impose trade sanctions and give practical support to the democratic and left opposition inside Iran.

Peter Tatchell
Outrage

[OUTOFTHENIGHT]

Morag. That was a good reply if you dont mind me saying.
I know quite a few Gay and bi-sexual workers who are united in the fight as proletarians and  are under no illusions that anything lasting can be achieved under capitalism.

[Irish Militant]

Far from it being a good reply, I think it mixed statements of the obvious with a crass attitude towards existing struggles.

Let's start at the beginning.

It is a point not just accepted but actively argued by the Committee for a Workers International that real liberation for women, oppressed ethnic groups or gay people is only achievable through the overthrow of capitalism and the birth of a socialist society. This is common ground between everyone on this thread, as far as I am aware, so repeating it as if it is an argument against anything KimberlySark or myself has said is rather foolish. To refer you back to the second paragraph of the first post in the thread:

Marxists understand that the overthrow of capitalism and the end of class division in society would allow human beings to finally overcome these divisions once and for all, although even then getting rid of the remnants of racism, sexism and homophobia would take time.

However as KimberlySark pointed out well, much the same is at root true of working class struggles for wages or conditions or democratic rights. The workers after all are not liberated by a pay rise or by longer work breaks, they need to get rid of the capitalist system. Marxists intervene into working class struggles, to advance the goals of the struggle itself and to point it towards socialism. We do not stand by the sidelines, or take a dismissive attitude. We get involved and make our arguments for socialism as we fight alongside workers. Much the same must be true of our approach to struggles against homophobia or racism or sexism. Again as I put it in the first post:

However, socialists also understand that it isn't good enough to put off fighting for women's liberation or an end to racism until "after the revolution". Discrimination and division have to be fought in the here and now as well. It is vital that Marxists intervene into the movement for gay liberation with socialist ideas and a class analysis. We do not simply tail after such movements but instead point to the need to get rid of capitalism.

When it comes to issues like homophobia or sexism or racism there is an additional reason why the active intervention of Marxists is important. These are all ways which capitalism uses to divide the working class. It is in the interests of all workers, of all socialists, to fight against discrimination and division by actively opposing sexism etc. That is a core part of creating the unity of the working class which we need - a unity achieved not by ignoring the likes of racism or simply saying that things will be better after the revolution, but by opposing it together.

Now I think that the Woods group leans on the issues of sexism and racism towards exactly the mistake I outline above: arguing that things will be better after socialism but otherwise opting out, rather than actively intervening into real struggles with a class analysis and a socialist programme.
BUT it is important to note that this is a different criticism than the one I am making over the issue of homophobia. I think that a weak approach is made to the issues of racism and sexism but no approach at all is visible on the issue of homophobia.

In so far as various supporters of the Woods group have argued along the lines that your organisation approaches the issue of sexism, you have actually moved far in advance of the official publications of your tendency. And I don't say that lightly because some of the remarks made on this thread have been crass in the extreme in dismissing the importance of the struggle against homophobia, but even that has been better than the long all-pervasive silence which comes from your organisation itself. The Woods group, as I have pointed out at length, has endless things to say about every trivial subject under the sun yet it can't as far as I can see muster a single article about the oppression of gay people in a decade and a half of existence.

Morag asks if I have emailed the IDOM website about this. The answer is that no I haven't - I've done something better. I came onto a discussion site run by your tendency and largely populated by its members and asked about it directly. The result has been instructive in its own way. No serious explanation for the absence has been given, except by redprophet who said that your leadership probably don't regard it as an important issue. There have been a number of posts which echo that imputed assessment, again and again downplaying the importance of opposing homophobia along with one post which actively opposed equal rights for gay people. A few people have said that they agreed with my original post - so here's a question for you: What are you going to do about it?

[OUTOFTHENIGHT]

Hey Irish Militant . What do YOU think we should do about it?
Is it just me or do you come over as very 'superior'?

[Irish Militant]

Originally posted by OUTOFTHENIGHT
Hey Irish Militant . What do YOU think we should do about it?

Were I in your place, I would begin by raising the issue in the organisation - at branch meetings or any local or national leadership bodies I was a member of. I would contact the organisation's leadership with my concerns. I would follow that up by submitting articles first to whatever internal discussion forums exist and then to the group's publications, looking to start a serious discussion on attitudes towards homophobia. My aim would be to develop a Marxist programme on the issue.

In other words I would raise the issue as a matter of urgency through the normal channels of the organisation. Where to go from there would depend on the response.

Is it just me or do you come over as very 'superior'?

Do you really think that it's necessary or useful to personalise a political discussion like that? Please, let's stick to the issues.