Revolution #179, October 11, 2009
Washington, DC October 10-11: Gay Rights – A Just Demand!
Support, Join the March for Equality
“Free and equal people do not bargain for or prioritize our rights, so we are coming to DC this October 10-11th to demand equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states. Now... As members of every race, class, faith, and community, we see the struggle for LGBT equality as part of a larger movement for peace and social justice.” (LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender [people who identify as other than their socially defined gender]).
From the call for The National Equality March in Washington, DC, October 10-11
On campuses, and in communities across the country, students and others are mobilizing to march in DC, responding to a “Call to Action,” issued by a group of student leaders, including student body presidents at dozens of colleges. The Call declares:
“The United States must end its system of inhumane segregation that continues to discriminate against LGBTQ Americans, denying equal opportunity to serve one’s country, denying the equal right to marry, and denying equal access to over 1,000 rights, benefits and protections granted to all American citizens... To remain silent is to endorse hatred. So we add our voices to the increasing millions who demand justice, freedom, and equality for America’s LGBTQ citizens. We urge all students to converge on Washington DC on October 10th & 11th for the National Equality March. We urge our students, no matter their sexual orientation, to organize buses, planes and trains, so we may express our unity and unwavering commitment to freedom and equality. Now is the time to speak out against this outrage and now is the time to march side by side in a powerful show of force in the struggle for freedom.” (For full statement and information go to equalityacrossamerica.org).
The march has been endorsed by a wide range of organizations and religious leaders. At performances of the Broadway musical Hair, the cast has urged the audience to go to DC and the show’s producers canceled a Sunday matinee so that the cast and crew could attend and perform at the march.
For all those who hate discrimination and oppression —and especially from the point of view of revolutionaries who are fighting for a world free of all oppression—this march and this cause are very important to support and join. And we have to seek to make this a powerful struggle that exposes and goes up against this system.
The capitalist-imperialist system we live in rests on a foundation of exploitative and oppressive economic and social relations. And the male-dominated traditional family both mirrors and enforces these relations, as well as all the backward ideas and values that reflect and promote all this. Patriarchy, traditional gender roles and traditional thinking about men and women all stem from and prop up the oppressive property relations in this society. To the powers-that-be, gay marriage, gay relationships, gay rights, and anything that deviates from the “father-knows-best” model of a traditional marriage undermines those relations. And for those who rule over society, shoring up the traditional family is part of a whole package of imposing and enforcing a whole set of “traditional values,” like racism, women being subjugated to men, and hatred of immigrants.
Living Without Basic Rights, Living in Fear
Victims of Anti-Gay Murders On February 13, 2007, in Detroit, Michigan, 72-year-old Andrew Anthos was riding a bus home, and a stranger asked Anthos if he was gay, followed him off a bus, and beat him with a pipe. Anthos spent the next ten days in a coma, paralyzed from the neck down, before dying on February 23. Witnesses say the assailant, who has not been apprehended as of mid-July 2008, spewed anti-gay expletives in the process of attacking the senior citizen victim. On March 14, 2007, in Wahneta, Florida, 25-year-old Ryan Keith Skipper was brutally murdered. Skipper's body—with 20 stab wounds and a slit throat—was found on a dark, rural road in Wahneta, less than two miles from his home. William David Brown, Jr., 20, and Joseph Eli Bearden, 21, were later indicted on robbery and first degree murder charges. Their trial, originally set for August 2008, was pushed to February 2009. The accused killers allegedly drove Ryan's blood-soaked car around the county and bragged of killing him. According to a sheriff's department affidavit, Ryan's murder should be considered a hate crime since one of the men stated that Ryan was targeted because he was a "faggot." On February 12, 2008, in Oxnard, California, 15-year-old Lawrence King was shot twice in the head while sitting in his classroom at E.O. Green Junior High School. He was pronounced brain-dead the following afternoon and was subsequently taken off life support. According to his classmates, King was considered a social outcast and often wore makeup, jewelry and high heels to school, making him the subject of ridicule among other boys. Brandon McInerney, 14, was charged with the premeditated murder of King. |
Being gay, lesbian, or transgender in America in 2009 means facing official and unofficial discrimination in every realm of society.
Only a handful of states allow same-sex marriage. This means that most gay couples are denied the more than 1,138 rights and protections (according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office) that U.S. citizens are supposed to have when they get married. These include Social Security benefits, veterans’ benefits, health insurance, Medicaid, hospital visitation, estate taxes, retirement savings, pensions, family leave, and immigration rights.
And, while people should not enlist in the U.S. military—which is an institution for torturing, raping, killing and dying in service of global empire—it is a stark indication of societal discrimination that, according to a recent article in an official U.S. military publication, some 12,500 people have been forced out of the military for being gay since the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was implemented in 1994. (“The Damage of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” New York Times, October 3, 2009)
Beyond legal discrimination, gays, lesbians and transgender people in America are forced to live in fear, and told they should live in shame. Fifty-four percent say they are concerned about being the victim of a hate crime (Harris Interactive 2006).
In part because of the situations they face at home, it is estimated that between 20 and 40% of all runaway youth are LGBT and they face a cold shoulder or a hostile environment at many runaway shelters maintained by religious organizations that promote discrimination against gays. Many religious organizations including the Salvation Army have successfully lobbied for protection against being prosecuted for refusing to hire gays or lesbians (Washington Post, 2001)
A 2007 survey revealed that nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students (86.2%) experienced harassment at school in the past year, three-fifths (60.8%) felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation and about a third (32.7%) skipped a day of school in the past month because of feeling unsafe. (“2007 National School Climate Survey: Nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT Students Harassed,” GLSEN)
Transgender students face particularly extreme attacks. More than half of all transgender students experienced physical harassment because of their sexual orientation and gender expression and more than a quarter experienced physical assault because of their sexual orientation and gender expression. (“Harsh Realities Finds Transgender Youth Face Extreme Harassment in School,” GLSEN)
Suicide rates among gay students are difficult to find. An article in Edge reported that, “Teen suicide is a serious problem, but among LGBT youth, it has been catastrophic” (March 3, 2009). A 2001 study of Massachusetts high school students revealed that 40 percent of gay and bisexual students surveyed attempted suicide.
The fact that millions of youth, and people of all ages, live under this kind of constant terror, and that this system creates a situation where over sixty percent of all LGBT students feel unsafe in school is a profound indictment of the system and the oppressive morality and relations it engenders and enforces.
A Struggle for Equality
Christian Fascists and Gay Marriage The virulent cutting edge of opposition to gay rights is coming from Christian fundamentalists. These forces may be lunatics, but they are dangerous, tightly connected with and dominant in the Republican Party, and have a lot of power. The Mormon church played a significant role in bankrolling the hateful, incendiary, and lie-filled media campaign that banned gay marriage in California in 2008. And the Christian fascist movement indoctrinates its followers with bizarre, Biblical fundamentalist hatred for gays. Recently, Iowa's Rep. Steve King threw gay marriage into the toxic stew of this vast right-wing populist rebellion—supposedly against Obama's healthcare proposals. (See "The Right Wing Populist Eruption: Yes, It Actually IS Racism," at revcom.us). King said that the demand for gay marriage was part of "a push for a socialist society where the foundations of individual rights and liberties are undermined and everybody is thrown together living collectively off one pot of resources earned by everyone..." On the one hand, King's statement is insane; the right to get married, and lead a traditional life in a traditional family unit, is not at all, in and of itself, a radical demand. It is simply a demand for equality under the law. It does not challenge the capitalist or even the foundational moral and social structures that reinforce the present order. And yet, on another level, King's statement should not be dismissed as simply disingenuous incitement of his base. As Bob Avakian puts it in Away with All Gods!: Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World, "The real objective of the Christian Fascists around the issue of gay marriage, and their condemnation of homosexuality in general, is to enforce 'traditional morality' and all the relations of oppression embodied in and enforced by that traditional morality—including patriarchy and the oppression of women, the subordinate position of women in society, and their essential role, as the Bible presents it, as breeders of children within the confines of male-dominated marriage relations, sanctioned not only by the church, but also by the state." |
The March for Equality is taking place at a time when right-wing, Christian fascist forces are continuing to very aggressively and actively promote their whole agenda of oppressive “traditional values”—like racism, women subjugated to men, the demonization of immigrants, and hatred of gay people. The attacks on demands for equality for gays and lesbians are coming down in extreme, virulent, and very dangerous forms from the Christian Fascists, with their invocation of the Bible (which calls for killing people who engage in homosexual acts).
While these reactionary forces have, if anything, become even more rabid with the election of Barack Obama, many progressive and enlightened forces in society have become sedated by the Obama presidency. So you have a situation where there is a great need for heightened struggle to demand gay rights, but many of the forces in society that should be motivated around this are instead putting their efforts into “holding Obama’s feet to the fire” and counting on him to win this fight.
Many who support Obama think he shares their values on ending the oppression of women and of gay people. But have they noticed how he routinely characterizes abortion as a bad thing, even if he does not oppose the right to abortion? Or how, at a time when the right of gay people to marry was being attacked in electoral referendums, he said that while he did not support those referendums, he at the same time opposed gay marriage itself—on the basis of his own religious beliefs?
Cleve Jones, a long-time gay rights activist who played a key role in initiating the March for Equality, said: “[W]e voted in enormous numbers for Obama. We want very much to believe that he has our best interest, as well as the entire country’s, in his heart. But he seems to be continuing this really hurtful policy of doling out increments of rights, fractions of equality. We’re tired of this state-by-state, county-by-county, city-by-city struggle for fractions of equality. And this latest thing [a memorandum signed by Obama to extend limited benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees], this is really just crumbs. And it’s disheartening to see so many of the leaders of our community standing there behind him while he sprinkles out these crumbs.” (Democracy Now!, June 19, 2009)
A big part of Barack Obama’s political agenda is finding “common ground” among “all Americans”—which has meant finding “common ground with” reactionary right-wing forces in society. It has meant uniting with and conciliating to those who support the killing of doctors who provide abortions; who think it is a sin—punishable by death—to be gay; who are behind the most hateful laws that would deny immigrants the most basic human rights.
But we have to ask: How can there be “common ground” between those whose core beliefs include the most vicious prejudices and draconian punishments for homosexuality, and those who believe in tolerance and equality? This is like Black people finding “common ground” with the KKK.
There may be struggle within the ruling class over how to deal with the question of gay marriage in society. But there is unity on the need to enforce and reinforce the oppressive economic and social relations that lie at the heart of this system—and all the “traditional ideas” that go along with and buttress this. And Obama’s agenda has many elements in common with conservative, religious forces in society. Obama has called for bringing religion more fully into political life; he has advocated an expansion of federal funding of faith-based organizations. Obama’s first televised campaign appearance with John McCain took place at Rick Warren’s fundamentalist Saddleback Church where Warren said he had asked both candidates about their definition of marriage and both said the same thing: “It is the universal, historic definition of marriage, one man and one woman, for life. And every culture for 5,000 years and every religion for 5,000 years has said the definition of marriage is between one man and a woman.”
The Obama presidency plays a very important role for the system—insofar as it is able to rope in and divert the struggle of the people into acceptable confines that do not really challenge the oppressive status quo. Obama wants people to believe in and rely on this oppressive system for change. He does NOT want people in the streets, fighting a determined struggle for equality that does not find “common ground” with reactionaries, but instead wages an uncompromising battle to demand an end to oppressive relations in society.
Obama, or any other representative of this system, doesn’t want to see this kind of struggle. Because once that genie is out of the bottle—once the oppressed people and the more enlightened people begin both to see and feel their potential strength and at the same time begin to investigate and debate why all this shit keeps happening and what can be done to really change it—then all kinds of possibilities for radical, and even revolutionary, change could open up.
But that is exactly the kind of struggle we need.
• • •
The current struggle for LGBT equality is part of a larger battle over the whole direction of U.S. society. And right now there is a lot at stake in uniting many, many more people to step into the fight.
The world does not need to be this way. This does not have to be a world where people are hounded, discriminated against, degraded, and killed for their sexual orientation. As we wage the struggle for LGBT equality, those who really want to get beyond the subjugation of women and gays in society must link that struggle to a revolutionary movement, and a revolution that will allow humanity, for the first time, to envision and bring into being new forms of intimacy and relationships that are liberated from all the ugly traditional oppression of women.
(For information on the National Equality March in Washington, DC on the weekend of October 10-11, go to equalityacrossamerica.org).
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