Some historians like to claim socialist ideas helped bring about gay rights in the modern era. But they’re mistaking academic theory for reality….Those gay intellectuals talked a lot about socialism, but they lived in capitalism. And it was the capitalist reality, not the socialist dreams, that liberated gay people.
Some of us can remember when socialists, unlike libertarians, were adamant about not associating their movement with something as disreputable as gay rights.
45 Comments for “History Lesson: Capitalism, Not Socialism, Led to Gay Rights”
posted by Doug on
I can remember when conservatives were against anything gay. . . oh that’s right, they still are fighting tooth and nail against any rights for the LGBT community.
Clean up your house first, Stephen, then you can criticize others.
posted by Houndentenor on
Interesting the lengths he’ll go to avoiding talking about the anti-gay language in the various state gop platforms.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
In America, most voters have two or one meaningful choice.
The Libertarian party was one of the many third parties that – in the 1970s – had some public statements backing some gay rights.
The main parties – in the 1970s – didnt want to alienate voters.
I think that the Minnesota Democrats had a plank supporting marriage equality, briefly.
Young Democrats in another Stated backed a plank repealing the anti gay criminal la
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
For the most part, gay rights didnt really begin to become a national issue until the 1970s and it generally was not taken seriously (by the media) until the 1990s.
In the late 1960s, Minor parties that backed womens liberation and the sexual revolution tended to have some interest in gay rights.
minor parties with right-wing views on civil rights, religion, and gender roles tended to oppose gay rights.
In the 1970s, the libertarian party took a right libertarian view on gay rights and the greens backed gay rights in the 1980s.
Outside of party members, most of this was unimportant. Political minorities are such for a reason.
The 19th century Equal Rights party nominated some for president who backed “free love”, but, again, how relevant was that to national politics.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
As an aside. The late 1960s – 1970s is when most Socialist parties in America backed gay rights..at least on paper.
So, I am not sure which Socialist parties Stephen dealt with. Several small and really small Socialist parties exist. Mostly in a few urban cities.
The Communist party USA did “encourage” Henry Hay to leave because he was gay, but i dont know when they took a policy position on gay rights.
The Human Rights Party was a leftist-libertarian third party that won some city council seats in the 1970s…some of first openly gay legislators.
Mostly, third parties dont win and so what they stand for is largely a historical footnote.
Although a few have won recently with not too great views on gay rights.
A libertarian lawmaker in VT was very opposed to civil unions and sided with the right wing to impeach the justices.
I hear that some CA libertarian candidates backed prop 8…
A Green won a Minneapolis city seat and opposed a domestic partnership bill.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
I do see some urban/rural divide in the gay community now. Unsure what it was like in the 1950s or 1960s.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I think that Boaz is setting up a false binary. Boaz and Downs are both wrong, to the extent that one claims that socialism gave rise to the gay rights movement, and the other capitalism. The gay rights movement did not arise as a result of either capitalism or socialism.
First, while the industrial revolution (which, incidentally, is not synonymous or coterminous with capitalism) led to increased urban concentrations of population, gay and straight, in urban areas, the rural to urban migration began in earnest over a century before the gay rights movement arose during the 1950’s, and cannot account for the rise of the movement.
The “gay rights” movement did not blossom until after the influx of large numbers of young gay men into the military, who beforehand had been isolated in rural areas and small communities, or isolated within urban neighborhoods for the most part, created awareness among gay men of the number of other gay men in the country, and spawned an increased sense of “I served, what about my rights as a citizen?”. In addition, the economic changes in the United States in the post-war world led to increasing urbanization among the population at large, gay and straight alike. The combination seems to be the trigger for the gay rights movement, which began in earnest in the 1950’s.
Boaz might want to read the work of Frank Karmeny and other pioneers of the movement in this regard. I think that his eyes might then be able to gaze upon a horizon that is considerably more expansive than that seen through his narrow either/or, capitalism/socialism, construct.
Second, while gays and lesbians may have been interested in socialism during the 1970’s, that interest arose two decades after the gay rights movement took root and blossomed, and certainly had little or nothing to do with the rise of the gay rights movement. More likely, the interest in socialism (which wasn’t all that significant) was nothing more than the LGBT version of the interest in socialism among some young people of that period, straight and gay alike.
As Boaz notes, correctly:
That’s right. I was “around in the 1970’s”, too (I am seven years older than Boaz, and, unlike Boaz, was an adult at the time of the Stonewall riots …), and I can attest that interest in socialism was not a motivating factor among any of the gay activists I knew in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, or among the men of my age whom I have subsequently met and come to know. At best, it was a small side act in the gay rights movement, close to non-existent.
Moving along, though, I found this curious statement:
Two thoughts:
(1) I wonder how many of the “gay libertarian writers around at the time” were active in the gay rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and how many were active in the movement during the immediate post-Stonewall period, rather than involved with “pointing out the benefits of free markets and the problems with socialism”. I ask because I don’t know, and because Boaz does not say what I expected him to say, “[T]here were gay libertarian writers around at the time, too, in academia, in the popular press, and oriented around the Libertarian Party, actively involved in shaping the gay rights agenda“. I suspect that Boaz phrases the sentence the way he does precisely because it was a decade later, in the mid-1980’s to mid-1990’s, when “gay libertarian writers” began to write about gay rights in earnest.
(2) I think that it would be interesting to learn how “gay libertarian writers at the time …oriented around the Libertarian Party” migrated from the Libertarian Party and aligned themselves with social conservatives and the Republican Party. It has always been a mystery to me why right-leaning libertarians aligned themselves with the Republican Party and could stomach the Faustian bargain they made with social conservatives. I don’t claim any knowledge about this shift in focus from the Libertarian Party to the Republican Party among right-leaning libertarians, but it has always been something I’ve wondered about, particularly since I know a lot of people (myself included) who shook the Republican dust off their feet after President Reagan invited conservative Christians into the party and started shaping the party’s policies to accommodate their “culture wars” demands. Right-aligned libertarians seem to have gone the other way, and it baffles me.
The gay rights movement has been a success story, however hard and long the road to equality, and however much we have yet to do. Success, unlike failure, has a thousand fathers, and it doesn’t surprise me that Boaz is claiming that libertarians were among the fathers. He has a point, with emphasis on the “among”. As we move into the month of June, when we generally celebrate Stonewall and all that followed, it might be a good time to reflect on the sacrifices made along the way by many, many thousands of gays and lesbians, instead of bickering and claiming credit. We can pick up that thread in July.
posted by Mike in Houston on
Those “gay libertarians” then were the same as Log Cabin Republicans today – safely ensconced within little bubbles of wealth that they would sooner cut off an arm rather than lift a finger to progress equality if it jeopardized a tax cut or their access to others in power.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Mike, I can’t say that I ever heard of either socialists or libertarians doing much of anything to advance the struggle for equality back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, even talk.
A few of a libertarian bent started writing in the mid-1980’s, and some of the work (e.g. Jon Rauch’s “Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America“) helped move the ball. And LCR, for a time, was active within Republican circles, but seem to have disappeared for all practical purposes.
But my experience with the post-Stonewall movement is limited to the Midwest (Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin), and my observations, although accurate within my range of experience, may not reflect the reality of the movement in other parts of the country.
Maybe libertarians were on the forefront in other parts of the country. But I suspect that Boaz’s observation (“[T]here were gay libertarian writers around at the time, too, in academia, in the popular press, and oriented around the Libertarian Party, pointing out the benefits of free markets and the problems with socialism.) is accurate, and that “gay libertarians around at the time” weren’t pushing for gay rights.
I can’t say that I pay much attention to libertarians, although I have a friend and a brother-in-law who are active in the Libertarian Party, because (a) the libertarian movement is small, fractured and fractious, and (b) the libertarian view of the role of government is (in my view) so limited as to be imprudent.
If the Libertarian Party nominates the Johnson-Weld ticket next weekend, and the Koch brothers get behind the effort, the Libertarian Party might find itself in a new ballgame this election cycle and thereafter. I think that would be a positive development (the Republicans are hopeless and have been for years), however much I have doubts about the libertarian position on the role of government.
posted by Houndentenor on
I know a number of Republicans who claim to really be Libertarians but keep voting for social conservatives who aren’t libertarian at all. We’ll see if they vote for Johnson instead of Trump in the fall. I wouldn’t count on it, but it’s a strange year and many predictions have been way off already.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
We’ll see if they vote for Johnson instead of Trump in the fall. I wouldn’t count on it, but it’s a strange year and many predictions have been way off already.
I’ll wait and see.
A lot depends on the “libertarian” big-money donors like the Koch brothers, the donors comprising Freedom Partners and Americans for Prosperity, Paul Singer, Peter Thiel and so on. If donors pony up in and the money used wisely, Johnson-Weld could break the 15% polling barrier required to get into the debates and mount a credible campaign.
I’ll wait to see what Stephen does, too. My guess is that he’ll follow LCR’s lead, and stick with The President Presumptive. Stephen’s always stuck with the Republican candidates in the past, with a single exception (see “Virginia’s Choice”, Stephen H. Miller on September 28, 2013, in which Stephen said that he would vote for Robert Sarvis, the Libertarian Party candidate, over Ken Cuccinelli, who redefined anti-gay asshole.
.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
Some right-libertarian groups wrote useful briefs in the Lawrence v Texas case, but i cant think of much that gay or allied libertarians did before that.
Yes, their were some gay libertarians but most of what they wrote for gay rights was made for a limited audience or had little real world impact.
I think that many right libertarian were happy to make their bed with the GOP and the religious right because they saw it as a chance for political power and some tax cuts.
posted by Houndentenor on
All the social movements of the second half of the 20th century could only have happened as a result of the displacement during WW2. Black soldiers proved they could do anything the white ones did. That eventually led to Truman integrated the troops and was a major step forward for integration. Women took on jobs that usually only men did and did them well. After the war some wanted to continue with careers. It was no longer possible to say that women couldn’t do those jobs because they’d already proven that they could. And finally (and most relevant to our discussion), gay men and women from all over the country, even the most rural parts of the country, found themselves in major cities and found others like themselves. yes, all those things would probably have happened eventually, but that mass relocation of people required for the war created social changes that no one at the time could have anticipated. I wouldn’t attribute any of that to either capitalism or to socialism. It was more a matter of there being enough gay people in the same location for any kind of movement to start. (On the other hand, the Nazis shut down the political movements in Europe that might have let to a gay rights movement there.)
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Exactly.
posted by Houndentenor on
Also, both socialism and capitalism existed for quite some time before there was any gay rights movement. I don’t know how one makes a direct correspondence between the success of gay rights to either.
posted by Doug on
IMHO I believe that it was probably the AIDS epidemic that galvanized the gay rights movement.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Dealing with AIDS certainly focused the gay rights movement, although it was active long before then.
I think that the AIDS epidemic changed the tone of the movement.
Before the AIDS epidemic, I think that there was a sense that straight people could be brought around to supporting gay rights and helping us in the fight. In the aftermath of the epidemic, a lot of gays and lesbians my age came to the attitude that we could never count on straights for anything, that we would have to fight for ourselves. And we started to do so, demanding rather than politely asking.
In that sense, I guess, the AIDS epidemic did galvanize the movement.
Men my age, who buried too many friends in the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, were stunned at the indifference/hostility of straights. We were changed by the AIDS epidemic, and because we were of an age to be the ones active in the movement at that time, the changes in us changed the movement.
I will never understand homocons, who (as I see things) are much too willing to put equality on the back burner, waiting and hoping the social conservatives will come around eventually.
posted by Doug on
I lived through it as well and the AIDS epidemic seem to me to be a real turning point.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I lived through it as well and the AIDS epidemic seem to me to be a real turning point.
I agree, Doug. It was during the AIDS epidemic that a lot of gays and lesbians decided that they weren’t going to take it anymore, and decided to fight with all they had. Attitudes changed, tactics changed and goals changed. AIDS affected everyone, and woke a lot of people up. I think that it was the end of trying to go along to get along, and the beginning of real anger and hard determination to win equality.
posted by Houndentenor on
There are a number of steps along the way. The reason that the Stonwall Riots rather than similar slightly earlier revolts in SF and LA led to a movement is that there were already groups like Mattachine in NYC ready to move forward. I agree that AIDS to coalesce gay people because no one was going to lift a finger to do anything. And then in the 90s celebrities finally started coming out which mainstreamed gay people in a new way. I’ve left out a lot, but there are whole books on this topic.
posted by Wilberforce on
wasn’t the guy who started Mattachine a commie? I’m sure he was. So let’s all start jumping to conclusions based on a single factoid. That seems to be what Stephen always does.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Wasn’t the guy who started Mattachine a commie? I’m sure he was.
Worse than that, even. Harry Hay was a Brit. And a member of the Radical Fairies in his elder years.
posted by Wilberforce on
Well then, we need to thank the Radical Fairies for all the progress we’ve made.
posted by JohnInCA on
Whatever history lesson you want to spin about ideologies, I think one thing should be fairly uncontroversial: gay liberation started in cities, and, as far as it’s reached rural areas, it’s a consequence of that.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
True. Almost all modern movements start/started in urban areas, for the simple reason that people are concentrated in rural areas, and can meet and/or organize more easily where population is concentrated. I wonder if the rise of social media will change that …
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Should read “concentrated in urban areas”.
posted by JohnInCA on
I think it’s more then just ease of communication/organization. By self-selection and changing over time, people in cities really are different then people in rural areas. It’s why you have the “blue city/red state” effect (applies even to California).
For whatever reason, people in cities are more liberal, or perhaps more accurately, libertine, then people elsewhere.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
By self-selection and changing over time, people in cities really are different then people in rural areas. It’s why you have the “blue city/red state” effect (applies even to California).
John, I don’t doubt your observation. Urban voters are more Democratic, less white, more unionized, less religious and so on, than rural voters, which accounts for the “blue city/red state” effect.
But while that may account for the earlier acceptance of gay rights in urban areas (and hence the earlier acceptance of gay rights by the Democratic Party), I don’t think “blue city/red state” accounts for the rise of the gay rights movement in urban areas.
In the 1950’s, when the gay rights movement took root, the cities were as anti-gay as the rest of the country. Something sparked a change in the gay community during the 1950’s, a change that brought gays and lesbians from parties to activism.
Most historians of the gay rights movement attribute two factors: (1) the social disruptions of World War II, when many rural gays and lesbians served and realized that other gays and lesbians existed, and (2) the post-war migration of gays and lesbians from rural areas and city neighborhoods into concentrated gay neighborhoods (the “gay ghettos”, as the impetus behind the rise of the gay rights movement.
Your observation got me thinking about whether rural gays and lesbians are different from urban gays and lesbians. I’ve lived in both rural areas and urban areas as an adult, about half and half in terms of years, and I think that there are differences, but that the differences mirror the differences between rural and urban straights rather than being peculiar to gays and lesbians.
Individual gays and lesbians — like straights — have distinct personality character differences that make some feel more at home in rural environments, and others more at home in urban environments, and I’m not at all sure that the differences fit broad sociological or political stereotypes.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Some of us can remember when socialists, unlike libertarians, were adamant about not associating their movement with something as disreputable as gay rights.
The Socialist Party USA has never gotten more than 10,000 votes in a presidential election since it was founded in 1976, a number so small as to make even the Libertarian Party look like a political powerhouse. If you are bothering to remember what the Socialist Party did with respect to gays and lesbians in the 1970’s, you are wasting precious brain cells, in my opinion.
Just for the record, though, the party’s current platform takes these positions:
Socialists may be late to the party, but at least they know there is a party, in marked contrast to some political parties.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
Gay rights in the 19th century was largely supported by the socialists, who had a left libertarian bent. A handful of upper middle class liberals got involved, but not many. This would be in Europe.
The Communists – who often fought with the socialists – tended to dismiss issues they felt were unrealted to class, or felt that sex outside of procreation was “decadent”.
In the United States, the main Communist party tended to take its policy cues from Russia.
The Socialist parties tended to be more supportive, by the late 1960s, especially the feminist ones.
The libertarian party was formed by a group of conservatives who felt that Nixon – and the Republican Party – werent conservative enough.
Again, none of these small parties were too important in national American politics.
Generally, civil rights movements gain initial traction in the cities. The leadership tends to be educated and middle class.
posted by Jorge on
It has always been a mystery to me why right-leaning libertarians aligned themselves with the Republican Party and could stomach the Faustian bargain they made with social conservatives.
I’m not a strong believer in libertarianism. The first thought that came to my mind was they realized they don’t like _____ people, and bought into the subtext that the Republican party will protect them. Oh, hey, you did wind up mentioning Reagan. Why should liberals and conservatives be the only closet hypocrites?
I will never understand homocons, who (as I see things) are much too willing to put equality on the back burner, waiting and hoping the social conservatives will come around eventually.
Gays have ranked a little lower than the back burner for thousands of years, and at the direction of the divine. What is the worth of a single person’s success or failure compared to such judgment?
Society cannot survive disasters such as the AIDS epidemic if everyone thinks the same way. There will come a time when the opposite of militancy leads to survival.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Gays have ranked a little lower than the back burner for thousands of years, and at the direction of the divine.
You’ve undoubtedly noticed, as I have, that G-d seems to adopt the biases of the humans who claim to divine G-d’s will.
I wonder sometimes if “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness … So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them …” has it backwards.
posted by Jorge on
What, as opposed to adopting the biases of lightning bolts and falling trees? I wasn’t speaking in irony, Tom, but you’re a step ahead of me again.
posted by Jim Michaud on
You got it backwards Stephen. Your post wasn’t a history lesson on the gay rights movement. Your article lessens the history of the movement.
posted by Dale of the Desert on
The first gay rights organization of any consequence and tenure in the United States was the Mattachine Society, which was established around 1950, and whose co-founder and principal face was Henry Hay. Hay was personally a communist, but the organization’s goals and operations were focused on gay rights and building a sense of community among gay people. Political-economic systems were never part of the Mattachine’s agenda. It was the leading gay rights organization until after the Stonewall Riots, after which new groups like the Gay Liberation Front accused the Mattachine Society of being too conservative and assimilationist (for example, the Mattachine Society insisted that all members wear suits and ties when staging picket demonstrations). Eventually, Harry Hay pretty much abandoned the gay rights movement to found a parallel group, the Radical Faeries, which, while aligned with gay rights causes, is primarily a gay spirituality-oriented and only loosely bound group, more in tune with the Age of Aquarius “Tune In, Drop Out” hippies than with politics. While gay people who are socialists have always been passionate about gay politics, their economic agendas have never dominated or controlled the gay rights movement. The AIDS crisis did not galvanize the gay movement. But it did increase the efficacy of the already booming gay rights movement by reducing the internecine warfare between various competing elements of the gay community…..with the possible exception of the Internet Gay Forum.
posted by Jorge on
after which new groups like the Gay Liberation Front accused the Mattachine Society of being too conservative and assimilationist (for example, the Mattachine Society insisted that all members wear suits and ties when staging picket demonstrations).
If I didn’t associate genteel protest movements with existing in such horrible oppression I’d wish I were raised to join one.
But it did increase the efficacy of the already booming gay rights movement by reducing the internecine warfare between various competing elements of the gay community…..with the possible exception of the Internet Gay Forum.
I’m pretty sure Al Gore didn’t really invent the internet at the same time the AIDS epidemic happened.
posted by Houndentenor on
Isn’t it Marxist to ascribe everything in history to class struggle and economics?
posted by Dale of the Desert on
It depends upon the class within which you are struggling when the ascription is made.
posted by Jorge on
Ouch.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
As something of an aside, I found this article (“Why is Same-Sex Marriage Still Up for Debate Among Conservatives?“) about the struggles that the Conservative Party in Canada is still having over marriage equality fascinating.
I hope that the Republican Party will come around quicker than the Conservatives seem to be doing. I don’t expect the party to change its platform this election, cycle, but I was hoping that 2020 might see a change. Hope so, but maybe not.
posted by Jorge on
I hope that the Republican Party will come around quicker than the Conservatives seem to be doing.
Quite possible. In some states gay marriage was decided legislatively.
Was that my blue state bias showing?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Quite possible. In some states gay marriage was decided legislatively. Was that my blue state bias showing?
Nope. Just stating the facts.
As I understand it, the states in which same-sex marriage was approved legislatively prior to the Obergefell decision (several states subsequently conformed marriage laws to Obergefell requirements) shared this in common: (1) Democratic majority in lower house, (2) Democratic majority in upper house, and (3) Democratic governor.
In states where Republicans controlled either house same-sex marriage legislation failed to be enacted. In states with Democratic majorities in both houses but with a Republican governor (e.g. New Jersey 2012), the legislation was vetoed by the governor.
But that’s not really the question I’m posing: How long will take Republicans remove to the “marriage is the union of one man and one women” plank from the party’s platform?
In Canada, over a decade after same-sex marriage was a fact on the ground, the Conservative Party’s platform still has the “one man, one woman” plank, and Conservatives seem to be having a hell of time getting it removed.
If the Republican Party takes as long, the party will still be fighting about it in 2025 and beyond. I hope that doesn’t happen.
posted by Jorge on
Nope. New York’s State Senate regained its Republican majority when it passed the bill in 2011.
It had a Democratic majority during the previous vote that failed in 2009.
If Donald Trump wins the presidency, the Republican party may be forced to acknowledge that the conservatives do not represent it. Trump could create a new conservatism, one that creates alliances religious conservatives end up closer to the wrong side of.
posted by Jorge on
I think I will start agreeing with the title of Mr. Miller’s “History lesson.”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Nope. New York’s State Senate regained its Republican majority when it passed the bill in 2011.
You’re right. I’d forgotten New York. Four Republicans (out of 32) and 29 Democrats (out of 30) provided the majority needed to pass the bill.
The four Republicans — Stephen Saland, Mark Grisanti, Roy McDonald, and James Alesi — were slated for payback by social conservatives in the next election cycle, with mixed results. Senator Saland was defeated in the 2012 elections, Senator Grisanti held off a primary challenge and was re-elected in 2012, Senator McDonald was defeated in the 2012 Republican primary, and Senator Alesi retired rather than face re-election and a potential primary challenge in 2012.