Libbing it up

The future of gay politics can be found in its past — with a few tweaks
By MICHAEL BRONSKI  |  June 13, 2006

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CHILDREN OF PARADISE: Peter Hujar’s iconic photograph for a Gay Liberation Front poster, circa 1970
The gay-rights movement has hit a brick wall. Yes, we have same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. Yes, the Supreme Court overturned state anti-sodomy laws. Yes, gay characters are all over mainstream TV. Still, after 35 years of slow, incremental progress, we are at a decisive crossroads. Simply put: to bring about real social change — dependent on truly transforming hearts and minds — it needs to reassess what kind of movement it wants to be. 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.

The right template for the future can be found in the gay-rights movement’s own history, in the insights of gay liberation — the radical, grassroots politics that emerged in June 1969, when queers rioted for three days in the streets of Greenwich Village to protest police harassment.

A week after the riots came to an end, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was formed. While its original membership included drag queens, ragtag queer youth, and old-time reformist gay activists, it was spearheaded by men and women seasoned in progressive, coalition-based politics with ties to labor, women’s-liberation, peace, economic-justice, and black- and Latino-liberation groups. In addition, almost everyone was engaged in some aspect of the national movement to stop the war in Vietnam. And — no surprise — all of these people were influenced by the late-’60s culture of anti-authoritarianism, sexual freedom, and personal liberation that was sweeping the country.

While I was not at the Stonewall riots (I think I was uptown at the New Yorker theater seeing a double bill of Ingmar Bergman films), I joined the GLF shortly after it formed. I was a 20-year-old lower-middle-class college student, active in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and anti-war protests. But the very idea of a politics that acknowledged — was actually based on affirming — my sexual desires was initially mind-boggling. This was the key, the cornerstone, that made all my other political work make sense. Of course, much of my, and my friends’, thinking was hopelessly naïve about both human nature and politics — particularly international politics — but on balance, it offered a more capacious and workable vision of justice than anything suggested by those who called simply for equal rights.

We gay liberationists have learned a lot over the past 35 years, as we’ve seen postcolonial-liberation struggles give rise to Islamic fundamentalism, watched a deeply reactionary, fundamentalist Christian constituency take center stage in US politics, endured the ravages of AIDS, and, yes, enjoyed some of the piecemeal gains made by the fight for gay rights. But it’s time to incorporate those lessons into the foundation we laid long ago — which provides a much sounder basis for the future than anything based on the limited notion of equal rights can offer.

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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.

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