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Communist stance on homosexuality
I'm not to sure on what the communist stance is on homosexuality. I always thought that the progressive left supported homosexual rights. However, when you read how homosexuals were treated in communist countries, it becomes more confusing to understand. I always thought conservatives were the ones who were staunchly against homosexuals..
So what is the communist/socialist stance?
Previously known as MarceauWorkers of All Countries, Unite!
Generally they are treated well. Much abuse was suffered from those in Marxist-Leninist countries, as Stalinist influence was very reactionary when it came to sexuality and identity, but modern day communists, with the possible exception of some European parties, fully support the Queer struggle (even if it is more of a sideshow tacked on with many western parties instead of a full blown enthusiasm).
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It is curious that the 'Communist' states in which you are referring to had horrendous positions on homosexuality (like Castro's Cuba for example). I however have always chalked this up to cultural backwardness though.
If you're not supportive of my rights as a human being and think I'm mentally deranged, perverted or whatever then you're no comrade of mine.
I think the Leftist stance on homosexuality is or should be "who the fuck cares."
Come little children, I'll take thee away, into a land of enchantment, come little children, the times come to play, here in my garden of magic.
"I'm tired of this "isn't humanity neat," bullshit. We're a virus with shoes."-Bill Hicks.
I feel the Bern and I need penicillin
Everybody is equal. Of course including gay's
Is this resistance or a costume party?
Either way I think black with bandanas is a boring theme.
fka Creep
What happened and still happens in 'Communist' countries doesn't tell us anything about the communist stance on homosexuality, because these are not communist countries. We have to go back to the early 1920s to find anything of value on this question from the USSR: the Stalinist counter-revolution completely reversed whatever gains for gay people that were brought about by the October revolution. The following is an appendix to an article published by the ICC in 2010, in response to the very repressive actions against gay people in parts of Africa. http://en.internationalism.org/iccon...gay-oppression
The workers' movement and the struggle against homophobia
Homophobia has deep roots, and the workers' movement, including its most advanced elements, has not been free from it. In Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, a magnificent broadside against the historical oppression of women, Engels himself presents homosexual activity in the ancient world as a pure product of decadence: "but this degradation of the women [Engels is referring to prostitution in ancient Greece] was avenged on the men and degraded them also till they fell into the abominable practice of sodomy and degraded alike their gods with the myth of Ganymede." Some of Engels' private views, expressed in correspondence with Marx, are even more obviously influenced by the dominant ideology.
Nevertheless, the workers' movement has consistently stood against laws repressing homosexuality. In the late 19th century, while countries like France had already, in the wake of their bourgeois revolutions, abolished such laws, Germany and Britain still retained them. Representatives of German social democracy such as Lassalle, Bebel and Bernstein all spoke in favour of abolishing these laws and any interference by the state in the private lives of its citizens. Bernstein, responding to the furor created by the trial of Oscar Wilde in Britain, wrote a series of articles on the question in Neue Zeit in 1895, using the historical method to show the relative character of sexual mores and challenging the notion that homosexuality was ‘unnatural'. However, he still tended to present homosexuality as an ‘illness' or a ‘pathology' that could perhaps be cured by the appropriate therapy.
The Bolsheviks in Russia continued the tradition of opposition to laws that repress different expressions of sexuality. All such laws were abolished in the immediate aftermath of the October revolution. However, with the Stalinist counter-revolution, with its cult of motherhood for the socialist fatherland, there was a flagrant regression and homosexuality was again subject to brutal punishment.
Since the onset of the counter-revolution in the 1920s, there appears to have been very little elaboration of marxist theory on the question of homosexuality, aside from the ‘negative' critique of the separatist and legalist campaigns and the ‘identity politics' that appeared from the end of the 60s onwards.
Contribution of psychoanalysis
However, the development of psychoanalysis at the beginning of the 20th century provides a theoretical basis for questioning the idea of homosexuality as a kind of illness. In a 1935 letter to a woman who asked Freud if he could cure her son of homosexuality, he wrote:
"I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them. (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime -and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.
By asking me if I can help [your son], you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies, which are present in every homosexual; in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted.
What analysis can do for your son runs in a different line. If he is unhappy, neurotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains homosexual or gets changed".
In fact, Freud's theoretical premises go further than the conclusion enunciated in this letter, where he defines homosexuality as a product of a "a certain arrest of sexual development". Throughout his work, Freud consistently posits an original bisexuality (sometimes referred to as the "polymorphous perversity" of the infant human being) which is then channeled in a particular direction through the process of repression - the origins of which lie in social relations conditioned by the struggle against scarcity. That would imply that heterosexuality as generally expressed in the context of present-day society is, no less than homosexuality, a product of arrested development. In any case, the debate about what a truly liberated human sexuality would be like in a society no longer dominated by exploitation and the day to day struggle for survival remains to be pursued by the revolutionary movement.
International Communist Current
"Another very vulgar commonplace is that Marx was a Hegelian in his youthful writings and it was only afterwards that he was a theoretician of historical materialism, and that, when he was older, he ended up a vulgar opportunist." - Bordiga
Socialists bring into question the role of the family and the ideology of sexism. The revolution of 1917 was progressive in that it brought advances to women from legalizing abortion and contraception. It is this undermining of the family structure and sexism that will pave the way for gay liberation. One of the reasons why homosexuals were repressed under communist regimes is due to the fact that certain revolutions (like the Cuban one) were focused on liberating from [American] imperialism. They did not bring into question the family structure as much as they should have and they adopted the bourgeois outlook that prevailed: homosexuality is an illness. That's not to defend their actions, but to stress the need for more radical outlook. It also shows that gay workers need to be involved in the struggle.
Last edited by NewLeft; 20th April 2012 at 22:11.
They asked Trotsky once what the soviet laws concerning incest are.
He said he never thought about it and there shouldn't be any laws as it isn't the states business.
He said if incest was banned and persecuted then humanity would really miss out, citing Lord Byron as an example.
That's where the problem lies. Those "communist" countries were anything but.
It also be might worth your while to read The Roots of Gay Oppression...
http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=310
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We care, how is that supposed to improve anything for gays if we don't address it and simply ignore it?
The Bolsheviks in 1917 didn't have much to say about sexuality. They were not progressive as we understand the term, but under tsarism there were hundreds of laws banning pretty much any kind of sexuality that wasn't married couples procreating in the missionary position, and the bolsheviks swept almost all these away without any of their number complaining.
Laws against rape remained, of course. Under Stalin, the old laws were brought back, almost verbatim. Homosexuality was regarded as 'bourgeois' or a mental illness, which under stalinism is pretty much the same thing.
I'd characterise the bolshevik attitude to adultery, homosexuality, promiscuity etc. as "I don't like what you do, but it's not important enough to argue about."
I don't have a link to it, but there's a famous passage written by Engels in which he rants against 'sodomy'.
There's a 1978 article here, by British Trotskyist leader Tony Cliff, arguing that socialists should support gay rights...because gay people are oppressed, and socialists defend oppressed people. Interesting that it took so long for socialists to discover they should oppose homophobia, and even then on rather formalistic grounds.
"Marxism has been changed; from a revolutionary theory it has become an ideology." - Karl Korsh (1950)
We love gay people. Nuclear family serves capitalism blah blah blah. I hope that helps.
I'm sure what he means is that we shouldn't care about whether a person likes penis or vagina because it's like hyping over someone's eye colour. If no one cares about who you're attracted to, no one discriminates you based on who you're attracted to. Obviously putting up "don't discriminate gay people!" posters isn't going to make everyone suddenly not care and thus end homophobia, so in that sense we should care.
This makes me wonder if smaller anarchist movements had anything to say about homosexuality.
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Anarchism: a system involving no government, invented by the Sex Pistols.[/FONT]
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Everybody is equal.
Yes, we want to make your wife a radical feminist lesbian, we want to forcibly gay marry you to a leatherclad bear, we want to send your kids into white slavery at the court of a black communist dictator, we want to paint your church red with the blood of christian babies, we want to set fire to your ikea and your SUV, we want to rape your labrador with the broken pieces of your white picketed fence.
We want to wage nuclear war on the nuclear family.
why? because we are pinko freedom hating commienazi atheist bastards, its just what we do.
~psycho
No one likes you La..
You're wrong. Homosexuality is not an arbitrary characteristic like someone's eye colour.
People can't really be "equal", but of course they can (and should, within reason) be treated equally.
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Political compass:
Social: -957 million
Economic: -55 billion
We're born with blue eyes and we're born with brown eyes, we're born straight and we're born gay; either way it only matters because people make it matter. Instead of "OMG YOU'RE GAY?!?!?! EUGH!" we should probably try for "cool, I like vagina (or penis)."
George - 1
Canadian John - 0
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Political compass:
Social: -957 million
Economic: -55 billion
Homosexuals deserve Marxism's highest support, along with all other social (which includes racial) minorities. Unfortunately, I imagine that one of the greatest challenges for the Marxist movement is to not get swept up in identity politics.
This is commonly asserted, as is its contrary, but there's no conclusive evidence for either position.
Not that it makes a difference to the discrimination debate. If being gay is genetic, a homophobe will simply call it a genetic disease. If it's not, they'll call it a mental illness - and compare it to serial killing.
If people were to change skin colour partway through life as the result of contracting a disease, would we say they don't deserve defence from racism? Obviously not.
"Marxism has been changed; from a revolutionary theory it has become an ideology." - Karl Korsh (1950)
That's not what I meant, I meant, it shouldn't matter if you're gay, straight, bisexual, asexual or whatever as in "who the fuck cares if you're gay or not."
It's a private matter and shouldn't negate someones humanity.
Come little children, I'll take thee away, into a land of enchantment, come little children, the times come to play, here in my garden of magic.
"I'm tired of this "isn't humanity neat," bullshit. We're a virus with shoes."-Bill Hicks.
I feel the Bern and I need penicillin
I'm in favor of violent terror upon bigoted individuals, but that's just my slice of banana bread.
