Following is a talk given in a panel titled “Fighting to win: How to defeat immigrant bashing, anti-LGBT bigotry, Islamophobia and the ultra right” at the Nov. 13-14, 2010, National Conference on Socialism sponsored by the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
 Stevie Merino PSL photo: Bill Hackwell |
This talk will focus on the continued struggle for women’s rights and the struggle for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender equality. Immediately following the elections, the mainstream leadership of both of these movements was thrown into something of a panic. They felt defeated by the right-wing shift in the Senate and the House. And since their strategy consists almost exclusively of lobbying capitalist politicians, they began rallying their base to support the Democratic politicians “now more than ever.”
The flaws in this strategy are obvious. In the last two years the Democrats have had unprecedented control over both Congressional bodies and the White House and what have they actually done to protect or promote LGBT or women’s rights? Very little. For example, in passing the Stupak-Pitts amendment to the Affordable Health Care Act, the Democrat-controlled House effectively barred access to safe abortions for working-class women except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.
In the current economic crisis, women, especially women from oppressed communities, namely women of color, are suffering the most. More than half of the 44 million people in the U.S. living in poverty today are women. In fact, the gap in poverty rates between men and women is wider in the United States than anywhere else in the Western world. Capitalist politicians in every city and state have been voting to slash social programs that disproportionately affect women workers. In the latest budget for the state of California, for example, programs such as CalWORKs were cut by an appalling $365.9 million—$256 million of it coming from the complete elimination of child care subsidies. The cuts to CalWORKs will lead to the immediate loss of child care services for more than 30,000 poor and working families and we all know that the burden of this will fall primarily on women.
Things are looking grim for women workers but what about for those in the LGBT community? Well, there have actually been a few significant gains in the LGBT struggle in the last two years, but we believe that those gains were won despite and not because of, the capitalist politicians.
Prop 8 sparked renewed struggle
The victory of the bigoted Proposition 8 in November 2008 sparked a wave of renewed struggle for LGBT rights. There were spontaneous demonstrations all over California, beginning the day after it passed and spreading throughout the country in the following weeks. The PSL was very active in these demonstrations, including leading a march the following Saturday in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Twenty thousand people came out against anti-gay bigotry in that action and it is important to note that in our call for that demonstration, we also condemned the attempts of the capitalist media to portray Black and Latino workers as inherently anti-gay. If you will recall, immediately following the election, there were stories all over the news that attributed the victory of Prop 8 to the increased numbers of Black and Latino voters. We knew that to be false and dangerous scapegoating meant to divide LGBT people from communities of color. We all know that in reality, the LGBT community includes many people of color! The crowd which came out to Silver Lake that night included people of all nationalities, young and old, gay and straight. One of the most popular chants throughout the crowd was “Gay, straight, Black, white. Marriage is a civil right.”
It is also important to note that prior to the passage of Proposition 8, many in the leadership of the mainstream LGBT movement discouraged militant actions. As the rightwing poured tens of thousands of dollars into their offense against gay marriage and rallied their base, LGBT people who wanted to defend gay marriage were told to be silent by their moderate leadership, which was oriented toward courting the Democratic Party. The strategy of most of their groups was not to rock the boat. They wanted to rely on pouring money into the pockets of Democratic politicians. Media commercials for “No on Prop 8” portrayed very few, if any, LGBT couples or individuals. The strategy was to generally not cause any “trouble,” hoping that if they were more “acceptable” to the conservative ruling capitalist class, then they would be given their rights. But no one has ever been “given” rights in any capitalist country. Rights must be fought for and won. Their silence is what allowed Prop 8 to pass in the first place and the subsequent fight-back movement by LGBT people and their allies is what defeated it.
The militant struggle of LGBT people, united with straight allies who feel strongly about equal rights, is what created the climate that forced the courts to intervene and overturn Prop 8. Following the upsurge in the movement sparked by Prop 8, numerous states passed laws in support of gay marriage, adoption rights, stronger hate crime legislation and equal benefits for LGBT families. We all know that there is still a long way to go in this struggle. Rights for oppressed groups should never be put to a vote. But the willingness of the LGBT community to come out into the streets to militantly defend their rights (in defiance of the more conservative elements of their leadership) and the willingness of other workers to join them in struggle, is what gives us hope that full equality can be won.
Oppression of women, LGBT people rooted in origins of class society
The roots of LGBT oppression and the oppression of women can both be traced back to the development of class society. Before then, when societies could barely produce enough to meet their most basic needs and scarcity prevented the accumulation of personal property, women occupied a high place in society. The advent of agriculture and the domestication of animals increased society’s productive abilities, but soon men asserted control over the new wealth and means of production. This led to a patriarchal social order in which women were relegated to bearing children, with male children inheriting wealth. This social order has been in place for thousands of years, and despite the leaps made by the women’s liberation movement in recent decades, the system of patriarchy will only be truly smashed when the material basis for it, meaning the system of private property, is smashed. It can not be effectively dismantled within the confines of this system.
Today, in the U.S., these struggles are essentially struggles for bourgeois democratic rights, that is, rights that are compatible with a capitalist democracy. The right to marry, the right to reproductive freedom, the right to be paid equal wages and enjoy equal rights, these are rights that workers can achieve under the current system. It would not take a revolution to grant workers these rights. But only a revolution can protect these rights. Under bourgeois democracy all gains that are won, can also be lost. Look at the right to abortion, for example. Through decades of struggle, the women’s movement won finally won the right to legal abortion in 1973. It is noteworthy that the Roe v. Wade decision came from a court dominated by Republican appointees. The deciding factor was not the composition of the Court, but the struggle waged by the women’s movement. In recent decades, since the women’s movement has declined, the reactionary elements of the ruling class have been chipping away at those rights, with increasing success. It was the same story with Prop 8, which was the ruling class’ way of stripping away gains that the LGBT movement had fought for and won.
Only a united and militant movement can beat back the capitalist oppression of women and of LGBT people. But only socialism can remove the material basis that creates and maintains that oppression in the first place.
We hope each and every one of you will get involved in the struggle for LGBT equality and to build a movement for women’s rights! We in the PSL will continue to fight side by side with all oppressed people! As a woman and a member of the LGBT community, I have come to realize that the struggle for women’s liberation and for full LGBT equality is part and parcel with the wider struggle for socialism! A victory for women, a victory for the LGBT community, is a victory for the oppressed and workers everywhere!o
