Victories for lesbian, gay, bi, trans movement
Pride on the march
By Leslie Feinberg
New York
As marchers passed the site of the 1969
Stonewall Uprising in Greenwich Village here June 29, hundreds
of thousands strong, the crowds and cheers swelled and so did
the sense of pride. Hundreds of thousands more lined the
sidewalks to applaud--from Central Park in the middle of
Manhattan island to the Village.
Thirty-four years ago it was those who had the least to lose
and the most to gain from fighting back who engaged the police
in hand-to-hand combat, forcing the well-armed cops to retreat.
They were Black, Latina and white, transgender and transsexual,
gay and lesbian, and many homeless youths. The rebellion lasted
for four hot June nights running.
This year marchers arrived at the site in far greater
numbers and diversity, filled to the brim with pride in
struggle, knowing that coast to coast and around the world
millions more were marching together--a vast contingent of
humanity demanding an end to bigotry, discrimination and
repression based on sexuality, gender and sex.
From San Francisco to New York, Houston to Chicago--and in
cities and towns in between--everyone had the sweet taste of
victory on their lips as they chanted and sang and cheered.
This year's Pride was a celebration of victories, here and
around the world, that are high-water marks in the long
struggle for equality and liberation of the gay and lesbian,
trans and bisexual population.
"Decriminalized" read the T-shirts of some who marched in
New York, referring to the June 26 Supreme Court decision that
effectively erases the last anti-"sodomy" decrees from state
laws.
As word of the long-fought-for triumph had spread that day,
victory rallies--planned and spontaneous--were held in cities,
towns and campuses across the United States. This was the
biggest political mobilization since the outpouring after the
lynching of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man, in October
1998.
The ruling wrung from the Supreme Court is not the only news
to roar about.
When General Electric--owner of NBC television
network--announced June 19 that the company's new union
contracts will include health-care coverage for employees'
same-sex domestic partners, it became the 64th Fortune 100
company to do so. Shop-floor pressure and leadership by groups
like Pride At Work, the LGBT constituency group of the AFL-CIO,
have made winning these benefits a top priority.
Full marriage rights between two people of the same sex
became a legal reality in Ontario, Canada, on June 10.
And on June 30, the British government announced a proposal
for "civil partnerships" that would grant to same-sex couples
who register in civil ceremonies many of the legal rights that
heterosexual couples automatically receive from the state. If
passed by Parliament, this would include pension and property
rights and respect for next-of-kin rights in hospitals. It's
still a parallel legal system that sidesteps the right to marry
and allows the state to avoid locking horns with Christian
church hierarchies. But it's a major step toward equality and
will undoubtedly encourage the movement to press forward.
Legal recognition of same-sex partnerships has already been
won in nine other European countries: the Netherlands, Denmark,
Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Portugal, France, Germany and
Spain.
These hard-won reforms further isolate the U.S. government
in the world arena. It is already having trouble justifying the
racist use of the death penalty; the incarceration of more than
2 million people, disproportionately people of color; mass
roundups of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians; the trampling of
civil liberties; the establishment of a military concentration
camp in Pentagon-occupied Guantana mo; leaks about torture;
rampant domestic police brutality; and flagrant disregard for
the self-determination and sovereignty of oppressed nations
within the United States and abroad.
No wonder they're having a hard time these days talking
about their "leadership of the free world."
Que viva Puerto Rico libre!
Just days before the U.S. Supreme Court ruling was handed
down, a very significant victory was won in the Americas. The
Puerto Rican legislature beat the U.S. Supreme Court to the
punch in removing the anti-gay laws from its books.
That statute had been established in 1898 when U.S.
imperialism seized the island as a colonial "possession." It
was a carbon copy of a California edict at that time.
Many of the anti-gay penal codes on the books today in parts
of Africa, Asia and Latin America are 19th-century colonial
laws imposed by the United States and Britain.
The British mercilessly persecuted indig enous sexualities
and genders in early colonial Zimbabwe, Uganda and other
colonized countries. Kenya's penal code dates back to the era
of iron-fisted British colonial rule. It's a copy of a law
finally repealed in Britain in 1967.
There are many examples of persecution of indigenous peoples
considered sex-variant or gender-variant by the Spanish and
Portuguese in the Americas, and in what became the United
States as it expanded westward. Nicaragua adopted an anti-gay
law after the CIA-backed forces fighting the Sandinista
government came to power in 1990.
This was all part of cultural genocide and colonial
subjugation.
As part of its national liberation movement, the African
National Congress publicly made clear its support for
lesbian/gay rights as early as 1986. Support for lesbians and
gays has been part of the South African Constitution since
1994, after it overthrew apartheid.
'Health care, not warfare!'
This is all especially important now because the war-makers
in Washington and London try to put a "liberation" spin on
their drive for empire. Before the war against Afghanistan,
articles appeared in U.S. and British mainstream monopoly media
and even in LGBT presses trying to justify the impending war by
pointing out that the Taliban was anti-gay and oppressive
toward women.
This argument emanated from Wash ing ton, which had armed
and supported the same fundamentalist forces in the 1980s to
overthrow a democratic secular revolution in Afghanistan.
Later, some of its allies turned against Wash ington when it
left them high and dry after that war ended. The current Bush
administration launched a new "endless" war, first against
fundamentalists in Afghan istan and then against a secular
regime in Iraq.
A left-wing current emerged in the LGBT movement that wasn't
fooled by Washington's claims of "liberation." Rain bow flags
snapped in the wind at the huge ANSWER anti-war protests across
the United States and in massive demonstrations around the
world.
This June, contingents marched under the banner "No pride in
racism, war and occupation" in Pride events in cities large and
small in the United States.
"We want education, not occupation," "Money for AIDS, not
for war," activists chanted.
Regime change? Start with White House!
If having an anti-gay ruler as head of state is the basis
for regime change, Pre sident-non-elect George W. Bush should
be the first one booted out. But by an independent movement
from below, not by pulling the lever for a Democrat.
The Republican Party claims about 25 percent of LGBT voters,
which may or may not be true. Of course, many, many people
throughout this country--including many in the LGBT
movement--are disenchanted with electoral politics and don't
vote at all. But at this year's New York Pride march, when
members of the Log Cabin Republican Club threw handfuls of
their party's buttons to the crowds along the route of march,
many onlookers threw them right back.
However, many elected officials from the Democratic Party
took the microphone at the June 26 victory rallies to claim
that the Supreme Court ruling was a gift from the Clinton
administration and proved the need to organize the movement for
a Democratic victory in 2004.
However, that's a distortion of the facts. Only two of the
nine justices on the current bench are Clinton appointees. This
ruling came from a court in which seven of the judges were
appointed by Republi cans--six of them by Ronald Reagan and
Bush Sr.
This same court narrowly upheld affirmative action in a June
23 decision.
What all this proves is that the mass struggle is decisive,
not which capitalist party is in power.
The landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation
ruling came from a Supreme Court led by Earl Warren--a
Republican who as California attorney general had been
responsible for the decision to intern Japanese people in
concentration camps during World War II.
The court that ruled on Roe v. Wade, legalizing abortion in
1973, had six Repub lican appointees--four of them Nixon picks.
Five of the Republicans voted to legalize abortion. Of the two
justices who voted against, one was a Kennedy appointee.
In both periods, the court bowed to intense mass pressure
from below.
As an election year looms, it's worth remembering that
President Bill Clinton signed the anti-LGBT "Defense of Mar
riage Act" to block the right of same-sex marriage. Clinton
caved in to the brass on "don't ask, don't tell." Vice
President Al Gore acted as point person for the pharmaceutical
giants' lawsuit against the South African government, trying to
prevent it from producing generic medications to treat the AIDS
pandemic.
During Clinton's eight years, more than 1 million Iraqi
civilians died as a result of economic sanctions--an illegal
act of war.
Today the Democrats and Republicans together have rubber
stamped the endless war for empire, cut taxes for the already
unimaginably wealthy, and sent vitally needed social services
down the chute.
Underneath it all is a persistent and intensifying
capitalist economic crisis that is making the ruling class more
ruthless and the working class and oppressed peoples of the
world more sorely burdened.
Current attempts in Congress to amend the Constitution to
ban same-sex marriage are meant to deflect anger from the
capitalist system that is the source of such poverty and
repression.
But a grassroots struggle, invigorated and emboldened by its
victories, can push back this and every other attempt to
demonize and discriminate. Such a movement can not only defend
gains, but widen them.
This movement finds its power not in a ballot but in voting
with its many feet in an independent direction, marching toward
liberation shoulder-to-shoulder with all who are fighting a
common enemy.
That's the spirit of Stonewall.
Reprinted from the July 10, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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