Gay unity, Gay diversity, Gay strength
A talk by Liz Ross (1983).
So ran the slogan and theme of this year’s national gay conference. What do the words unity, diversity and strength mean?
Unity means all of us fighting for our rights. Diversity means support for all the many gays - christians, leather queens, socialists, feminists, etc. And strength - our strength based on our numbers, our unity, our diversity. We are at least 10% of the population, more in some areas, where united and diverse we can show our strength, for example by voting people in and out of office.
But is gay unity, gay diversity, gay strength as I’ve just outlined, the formula for our liberation? That certainly has been the message of much recent theorising and activism, especially with the recent focus on creating a gay community.
As my conception of liberation is a fundamental change in society, I’ve got a somewhat different interpretation of how we can revolutionise the world. So let’s look at the slogans again.
GAY UNITY
It might be possible to find issues which do unite gays completely. But what would the aims of a movement which could encompass the demands of a Billy McMahon on the one hand and aboriginal activists on the other.
A little bizarre you say. But these are the contradictions we face when contemplating unity. And when unity is proposed and achieved - what really happens?
1979 was the middle year of the UN Decade for Women’s Rights. Right wing women were particularly active in the conferences and workshops. Women’s liberationists responded by proposing an alternative - a "moderate-radical" coalition. A coalition of open lesbians, ALP women and Liberal Party member Eve Mahlab.
While much was compromised to have the "respectable" Mahlab head the coalition, she certainly did not compromise her politics. She strongly resisted the inclusion of open lesbians and refused to endorse a letter to the Age in response to a lesbian-baiting attack by WWWW (Women Who Want to be Women)
And she stayed in the coalition as its public "head". The emphasis on "unity" among women, in this case and elsewhere, means in practice making concessions to the right.
To achieve our liberation we need a revolutionary change in the social situation, not unity with our class oppressors around illusory common interests.
GAY DIVERSITY
The diversity of the gay community - a colourful phrase but what does it mean, how does diversity work?
A toss of the coin shows the real relationship between unity and diversity. Heads it’s unity, tails it’s diversity.
If unity is making concessions to the right, the only novelty about diversity is to do the same thing using a different word.
Gays are everywhere - one of the many slogans to come from gay liberation. And it means exactly that. There are working class gays, middle and ruling class gays, black gays, young, old, asian, disabled, women and men. And precisely because lesbians and male homosexuals are everywhere in the capitalist society we live in, we are confronted by oppression and exploitation in different ways.
Earlier I asked what would be the aims of a movement encompassing a Billy McMahon on the hand and aboriginal activists on the other. Or black lesbian demands and that of Martin Webster, one of the leaders of the British National Front - who is gay.
It is not being gay that makes people in these examples different. What I hope is clear from this is that oppression does affect people differently. And the difference is based on their class position in society. So their demands and their aims will be based on these differences - and in many cases will be diametrically opposed.
However, just say we do propose an organisation of all gays? On what basis could we do this in a capitalist society? And what would be the results of, for example, an alliance between gay bosses and workers? Well we’ve got some good examples from the US.
As early as 1973 gays employed in and running a gay counselling service found themselves on either side of the picket line. Workers complained that women and blacks were not getting a fair deal at the centre, either as clients or counsellors. The gay management did nothing except make a couple of token appointments to the Board. Other complaints relating to working conditions were ignored.
The issue dragged on till April 75 when workers began putting out a newsletter with their demands, called "It’s about Time". Management immediately asked them to sign a loyalty oath to the centre which was the bosses’ demand for "no criticism". The staff - paid workers and volunteers - refused. Those who weren’t fired walked out in support and were then fired.
From May 1 to the middle of July a vigorous picket line was maintained in front of the counselling centre. Offices of the Board of Directors were picketted, community meetings were held.
The strike wasn’t won in the end and workers didn’t unionise until after they’d been fired, but the divisions were clear from the beginning. The reality of an alliance here was the subordination of workers’ interests to those of the bosses.
Again in America during 1980, gay bar workers complained about several illegal practices, including the absence of lunch and coffee breaks and refusal to pay overtime. Few of San Francisco’s thousands of gay bar and restaurant workers had company sponsored medical insurance and most received no paid holidays.
Workers at Church Street Station restaurant approached Local Two of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union with a number of complaints about their working conditions. They also filed their complaints with the State Labour Commission after management refused to respond to employee objections.
Local Two filed immediately for an election at the restaurant to enable workers to join the union. At that stage about 70% wanted a union and were, in the words of one staff member "as mad as hell". The management responded by bringing in a union-busting firm - a thriving business in America. Within 2 weeks, 5 of the leading pro-union activists were fired for such reasons as "anonymous customer complaints". Pro-union discussion was forbidden while anti-union feelings were encouraged. Workers were threatened with the loss of their jobs if they continued to try to unionise.
The Tavern Guild, the association of gay bar owners - of course the bosses are allowed to have their union - a powerful force in the San Francisco gay community came out strongly against the unionisation. Pro-union activists were banned from working in any gay establishments belonging to members of the Tavern Guild. And that meant most if not all bars in town.
The Sentinel, a gay paper distributed through the bars, attacked the union because it was an "outside influence" that shouldn’t meddle in "community" affairs. The union-busting firm, also by their definition and "outside influence" wasn’t mentioned.
Despite the support from gay and women’s groups, the bosses’ pressure was too great. When it finally came to the vote the workers at Church Street voted 25-16 against joining the union. And although there’s private support for unionisation, the continuing influx of gays into San Francisco provides a steady flow of workers prepared to take jobs - having to in many cases - even those with appalling working conditions.
GAY STRENGTH
This leaves us with the last part of the slogan - gay strength. If we haven’t got it from unity or diversity, where does it come from?
Without doubt early successes of gay liberation came from flaunting our diversity - gays are everywhere and uniting around common issues - gay liberation.
But - and this is a crucial but - it was the aims of a radical movement we were uniting around. The aim of a complete change in society that is required for our liberation. And we were flaunting our diversity for gays to recognise and have pride in themselves. It was not around the "stay gay, buy gay and keep the bosses money rolling in" or "wear leather one day, silk the next" to keep the fashion designers in business, type of diversity.
And because we came together publicly around these aims and showed our strength we won some very important gains. We won some law reforms, we won support from unions and peak union councils - ACSPA, CAGEO, and we won a level of social acceptance (in the West at least) that gays have never had before.
We also won because of the timing of our movement. Gay liberation was at its height in the early 70s, along with other liberation movements, when capitalism was in boom. Concessions, even some apparently costly ones, such as equal pay for women were won then too.
But as capitalism started to decline by the mid-70s, with one of its many and inevitable recessions, our gains started to decline too. And in some cases were turned into outright reversals. So, for example, by the mid 70s, 40 US counties had passed legislation banning discrimination on the basis of "sexual or affectional preference" in housing, employment and public accommodation. Dade county, Florida was just another one of these.
But Dade County Florida became the showpiece of the right when this legislation was repealed during a referendum, repealed by a huge majority. Anita Bryant who spearheaded this reversal was by no means new to this sort of political campaigning. She was previously involved in pro-Vietnam war activities, including morale boosting singing for the US troops. And more recently she had been active in the anti-bussing campaigns aimed at maintaining the segregation of blacks in the US.
Bryant, who was a born-again Baptist and was living at the time with her manager husband and four children on a $300,00 Miami Beach Estate, first heard of the Dade County law from her pastor. Even before it was passed she was ‘appointed by God as His personal messenger in the War on Perverts’. "God drew a circle and I stepped inside, where he put fire in my heart!" are her unforgettable words.
Within weeks she and an army of mostly housewife volunteers, working under a specially created all-male advisory board, called "Save Our Children" had gathered some 64,000 voter signatures to force a June referendum on repeal. In Dade county once an ordinance is passed it can be put to a referendum for support or repeal providing at least 10,000 voters sign a petition.
The campaign leading up to the referendum was marked by vicious attacks on lesbians and male homosexuals and scare tactics focussing on heterosexual parents. These tactics effectively redefined the issue from one of rights for lesbians and male homosexuals to one on saving children from molestation. It worked. And the legislation was repealed by a huge majority.
Today the aims of the gay movement have dropped from liberation to acceptance of a diverse gay community. Aims not very different to those in Germany with the first homosexual movement. And as Germany showed, even the support of the gay community for minor reforms did not stop the Nazis smashing the movement and sending thousands of gays to the concentration camps.
I seem to have come to a rather dismal end. Our demands have been scaled down, we’ve suffered a variety of defeats and our history shows a similar pattern. And I said I’d come to the part of the slogan about gay strength!
Well I’d like to phrase the question of liberation and strength in a different way.
The aim of most gay socialists is still liberation, not a community. Liberation which involves a fundamental change in society, ie, the overthrow of capitalism. To call on gay unity, diversity and strength, apart from the problems I’ve already outlined is to demand the impossible! Why? Because what we are saying is that 10% of the population can take on and defeat capitalism.
It would be nice, but completely utopian and dangerous to imagine that this could happen. And our history - Dade county, Germany, etc, has shown that as a community we cannot always even defend our gains, let alone overthrow society.
Well I do want to look at gay strength now. I want to look at some of the times we have won and why. The strength we should build on is the strength of the working class, the only class which has the power to overthrow this society and replace it with a better one.
And how we build on that strength, how we develop the links is very much determined by what is happening at the time. What we do is not to focus on a single tactic, but to choose the best tactic for the time.
Three examples:
Because, it was argued, being gay wasn’t really different - really only a matter of sexual choice. And after all, if nothing else the US is proclaimed as the land of ‘free choice’.
With the campaign against Briggs, things were different. Gays came out and fought openly. As Amber Hollibaugh, one of the organisers puts it:
"It was frightening, a statewide confrontation. California is huge, a rural farm state. Farmers vote here, agribusiness controls things here. Doing publicity meant going to small farm towns, facing conservative working people…
"We went to the farmers, to the union locals, to the schools, to the hospitals, the childcare units, all the places we hadn’t been before…
"And we won, won in every single area of the state where we went and did work. We won because we came out and the community was politicised…"
Two more indicators of just how successful the campaign tactics were. The anti-Briggs cause - and gays specifically - were publicly support by the Teamsters Union. At the same time a pro-hanging bill was passed.
And there are lots of others. The BLF went out in support of a lesbian at Monash, gays supported the equal pay strike at Trico in 1976, Grunwick in 1977 (both in the UK) and were at the forefront of the fight against the fascist National Front at Lewisham in England. Gays have been active in campaigns against the National Front in Australia too.
What I’m saying is that this is how we will have gay strength and build for our liberation - by participating in the working class struggle against capitalism.
So to come back to the slogan and the theme.
Yes we do want unity - but not with our bosses. We want unity with the world working class.
Yes we do want diversity - the diversity of the working class - the class that is made up of every single group in society - except the ruling class!
Yes we do want strength - the strength of the working class - the only class that has the power to unite all the oppressed and overthrow capitalism.