International Socialists

The movement for gay liberation started at a bar in New York when lesbians and gays fought back against police harassment. Kevin Ovenden traces the developments since, and argues that "identity politics" are not enough to fight sexual oppression.

 

 

In June 1969, a routine police raid on the popular gay bar, the Stonewall Inn on New York's Christopher Street, touched off three nights of riots and demonstrations. The modern gay liberation movement was born. In the immediate aftermath of the Stonewall riot the Gay Liberation Front was formed.

 

Now, thirty one years on, the oppression of lesbians and gay men is still very much a part of everyday life. The fact that consenting homosexual sex was illegal in New Zealand until the mid-1980s is a shocking reminder of this. The continued backlash over Aids, increased gay bashing and Christian Heritage's insults aimed at lesbian parents are other examples. The concerted efforts of the previous National led government to destroy the social gains of the 1980s and go back to a new Victorian morality had its effects on lesbians and gays. But despite a growing anger at these attacks the gay movement has failed to draw wider forces into the struggle. Once characterised by the slogan "Come Together," it is now more fragmented than ever.

 

The GLF styled itself a revolutionary movement, albeit in a slightly confused way. The name itself echoed the Vietnamese Liberation Front and the GLF declared its solidarity with all movements of the oppressed and exploited. In some quarters this solidarity was reciprocated. Huey Newton of the Black Panthers wrote from his prison cell in 1970 to express his support for the new gay movement. However, the vision of revolutionary change was very vague. In many ways it flowed out of the least political aspect of the 1960s revolt, the "counter culture," which emphasised "dropping out" and establishing an alternative lifestyle.

 

These ideas went hand in hand with a commitment to build a movement to confront anti-gay bigotry. In the UK the GLF organised sit-ins in bars which refused to serve gays, various marches and protests and contingents on marches with the TUC against anti-union bills.

 

The excitement of the new movement made up for the lack of any clear idea of how to overcome sexual oppression, or any idea of where this oppression came from in the first place. But as the initial enthusiasm waned and the movement had to confront real questions, the confusion took its toll. Many activists began to see homophobia not as a product of the nuclear family under capitalism but as an inherent attitude in all straights.

 

Consequently the fight for gay liberation was presented as a fight against the "straight world," regardless of the class makeup of that world. "Radical Drag" and "Radical Queenery" were designed to shock the "straight world" rather than win sections of workers to fight for gay rights. It also provoked splits in the movement. Further splits took place as lesbians effectively left the GLF to focus on the women's movement. The shapeless nature of the GLF did not lead to greater democracy but to the emergence of a articulate wealthy leaders not accountable to any democratic structure. The GLF fell apart in the UK in 1972.

 

In two years it had succeeded in making lesbian and gay liberation a central political issue in both the US and Britain, and had encouraged thousands of, mainly professional and wealthier, people to come out as openly gay. It popularised the use of the word "gay" as a badge of pride in opposition to oppressive terms like "queer." It was also an advance on the highly respectable and conservative lobbying organisations like the Committee for Homosexual Equality, which had led the field in the 1950s and 1960s. However, its lasting impact was in the explosion of the gay scene.

 

The main gay rights groups in New Zealand today focus on advocacy and putting pressure on officials and MPs, as well as organising social events and "lifestyle" celebrations. The direct action tactics of the GLF: kiss-ins, pickets and demonstrations are rarely seen in our movements. Local gay movements have not succeeded in building anything like a national movement or in organising the considerable number of gays and lesbians who want to fight back.

 

The confused theories of the early movements have been sharpened into a set of ideas - identity politics. The idea that simply asserting your identity is the way to overcome oppression leads away from collective struggle. For those who can afford it, it is possible to assert your identity on the gay scene. Clubbing, shopping and fashion become seen as liberating activities but they are inaccessible to the majority of lesbians and gays. Furthermore identity politics centres on enlarging the so-called "pink economy," making money for gay businessmen, rather than challenging homophobia in the rest of society. The glorification of a particular lifestyle is directly counterposed to winning the widest possible support for the struggle for gay rights.

 

Frequently the identity which is seen as liberating in fact reflects the pressure of homophobia in society. The idea of a particular sensibility often boils down to accepting the reactionary idea that gay men are narcissistic and vain and lesbians aggressive and ambitious.

 

The use of the word "queer" by many activists is symptomatic of the isolation of the movement. People can choose to call themselves queer within the confines of the ghetto - or a tokenistic one night a month at some local dance bar - but "queer politics" is less than attractive to the majority of lesbians and gay men who have no choice about having the term queer hurled at them as a term of derision and abuse.

 

The focus on identity politics leads to potentially positive events like Pride Week using protest simply as stunts which can provide publicity. Only small numbers are needed for such stunts and this reinforces the move away from mass struggle. The result is an inverse moralism, with a handful of of activists seeing themselves acting on everyone else's behalf and blaming the mass of gays and straights for not becoming involved.

 

Socialists question this insistence on the divisions of "gay" and "straight." We see this obsession with categorisation and labelling all aspects of human life as one of the many negative results of capitalism. We argue human sexuality is best viewed as a continuum, with freedom to experiment and identify and act regardless of label or "identity." Thus the so-called "straight" community should be involved in gay liberation struggles, because a greater democracy of sexuality will see alienation, loneliness and feelings of isolation decrease for all of us.

 

It is necessary to place the fight for gay liberation within the overall political picture. Failure to do this has led to serious mistakes. In Britain the campaigns against homophobic rappers Buju Banton and Shabba Ranks provoked a racist backlash of the wealthy against working blacks. Calls for banning them added to the already noisy chorus of bigotry coming from the right wing. Instead of winning young blacks to see that black people and gays face a common enemy - the system which oppresses them - it wrote them off as irredeemable bigots.

 

The last few years have seen explosions of anger against attacks on gays, continued institutional bigotry against lesbian and gay couples and underfunding of AIDS research. But the ideas that dominate the gay scene has held this anger and frustration back. Separatist arguments have been directed against involving straight workers and against the need for radically democratic organisation. The need for a politics which breaks out of the ghetto and unites those fighting back, rather than emphasising their differences, has never been clearer.