Workers World Party candidates' Pride salute:
Why socialism is key for LBGT liberation
Pride greetings to everyone today!
We are marching with you to celebrate the
Stonewall Rebellion that ignited the modern U.S. lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender liberation movement in 1969. And we
are here to cheer the great victories against state oppression
that we all won last year: the Supreme Court's Lawrence vs.
Texas decision that finally decriminalized lesbian and gay
lives, and the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision legalizing
same-sex marriage.
But these victories, won through years of struggle, are just
part of what we want. We want more than the lifting of legal
penalties and social stigmas. We want a future where LGBT
people and all people have free health care and free education,
free day care and elder care, affordable housing and jobs--and
vacations! We want a society with equality for
all--socialism.
Socialism means liberating the vast, worldwide apparatus of
production that was built through collective labor from private
ownership and organizing production to meet human needs and
wants.
We are longtime fighters in the struggle for LGBT
liberation--two of us as lesbians, and the other as an ally who
has fought together, shoulder- to-shoulder, with LGBT people
for his entire political life.
We are also workers, people of color, supporters of the
labor movement, anti-war and anti-imperialist activists.
And we are here as members of Workers World Party--a
revolutionary party that has marched with a contingent at Pride
since 1972, carrying the banner "Stonewall means fight
back!"
Workers World Party has made important contributions to
understanding how oppression based on sexuality, gender and sex
arose historically. But we know that the point is not just to
understand the world. The point is to change it! So in every
political struggle we bring forward the issue of LGBT
liberation.
We know that the LGBT struggle is connected to the struggle
against racism, the struggle of people with disabilities, the
struggle of the people who do the work of the world--that all
struggles for liberation are connected.
Why campaign in these elections?
Why are we campaigning now? We want to bring the struggle
for LGBT liberation forward during this election year--and we
know Bush and Kerry aren't going to advance our cause.
Bush wants to make same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Kerry
would let it be declared illegal on a state-by-state basis! But
their position on marriage is just a signal--a message to the
right wing that neither of them intends to fight for LGBT
people.
Kerry doesn't even bother to give lip service like Bill
Clinton, who wooed LGBT people during his 1992 campaign, then
turned around and surrendered to the generals with "don't ask,
don't tell," which has actually made life even worse for LGBT
people in the military. Then Clinton joined with
arch-reactionary Jesse Helms and signed the anti-gay Defense of
Marriage Act.
But Kerry is not even pretending to be a supporter of LGBT
rights.
Both Bush and Kerry are for continuing the brutal war in
Iraq. As LGBT people we can be proud that the first military
resister who refused to serve was gay Filipino Marine reservist
Stephen Funk.
We know that LGBT people are everywhere--in the workforce,
in the struggle for immigrant rights, for health care and
funding for AIDS and for women's health, for custody of our
children and for day care, and as young people who soon may be
subject to the looming draft.
That's why it is crucial in this election year that we have
our own independent political movement that will fight for LGBT
lives--which means to fight for all of our lives under this
racist, oppressive economic system of capitalism.
We are the candidates that represent that independent
movement for people's power. We don't intend to hand our power
over to the Republicans or the Democrats. We are waging an
educational, struggle campaign to take the message to the world
that the only road forward is for working and oppressed peoples
to unite and fight in our own interests for a socialist
future.
Teresa Gutierrez and John Parker
Workers World Party candidates for vice president and
president
LeiLani Dowell
WWP member, Peace & Freedom Party candidate for Eighth
Congressional District, San Francisco
Reprinted from the July 1, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
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