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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, Queer Times? - Article﻿</title>﻿

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﻿<b﻿>﻿Queer Times? 

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by Alan Sears﻿<br﻿>﻿

﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, June - July 1998﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

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We live at a moment when queers are more accepted in Canada than single mothers receiving welfare payments. Over the past 15 years, queers have made gains despite the overall right-wing offensive that has attacked many of the hard-won reforms gained since World War 2, including welfare benefits, trade union rights, health care and the rights of immigrants and refugees. How do we make sense of this contradictory situation?

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Single mothers are under attack for economic reasons as much as for moral ones. Right-wingers see single mothers as guilty of "dependence," the "crime" of requiring family benefits to survive. To cure this "dependence", benefits have been driven down to sub-poverty levels and forced labour is being introduced through workfare. This contempt and derision affects single mothers whether they are lesbian or straight.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

At the same time, there have been some real gains in recognizing the rights of lesbians and gay men. In March, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that lesbians and gays in Alberta have access to human rights protection, despite provincial legislation that allows discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In May, the Nova Scotia government recognized same-sex couples for the purpose of access to benefits. Official recognition of lesbian and gay activism within the trade union movement took a great step forward over the past year, with a historic meeting of 340 queer trade unionists called by the Canadian Labour Congress in Ottawa last October 15-17.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

On the cultural front, the gains have perhaps been even greater. Lesbian and gay characters are increasingly prominent in movies and television shows. Check it out: soaps, dramas, screwball comedies, even cop shows. One of the cops on "Homicide: Life on the Street" had a fling with another guy. The queer slogan "we are everywhere" used to announce that lesbians and gay men were your sisters, co-workers and sports heroes, but invisible because bigotry kept them in the closet. Now "we are everywhere" means that a bigot needs to keep a quick trigger-finger on the remote control to avoid lesbian and gay images.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

These gains do make an important difference in the lives of many lesbians and gay men. At the same time, there are huge battles still to be waged. Bashing still threatens anyone perceived to be lesbian or gay. The recognition of same sex relationships provides important access to resources for some people (for example, middle-class couples or workers with unionized jobs that actually offer benefits). Yet the same recognition is being used to cut some lesbians and gay men off social assistance benefits on the basis of their partner's income. Poorer gays and lesbians will now face the same punitive intrusion by the state into their lives that single mothers have long confronted, particularly the policing of households in order to cut off those deemed to be in a relationship. This will most directly affect lesbian mothers and people living with AIDS and HIV.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Many people still cannot come out because they fear rejection or violence. As a result, they do not get access to many of the resources that gay and lesbian communities have developed. People of colour and members of ethnocultural minority communities may also be deprived of access to these resources due to racist or ethnocentric ideas of who is part of "the gay community."

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Indeed, same-sex relationship recognition recently arose in a specifically racist context. The federal government's "Not Just Numbers" report is an appalling attack on the rights of immigrants and refugees, but it does allow for some sponsorship of same-sex spouses. Queer organizations should be uniting with immigrant and refugee rights groups in fighting this report, but there is a risk that more conservative groups like EGALE will respond positively to the offer of relationship rights for lesbians and gay men.

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So why are queers making gains in such difficult times? In part, it is because lesbians and gay men fought back. It has been almost 30 years since the Stonewall rebellion in New York that launched the contemporary lesbian and gay liberation movement. The new movement that emerged was committed to militancy, visibility and the elimination of the compulsory family system. We would not have seen any of these gains without this struggle. 

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But at the same time, changes in capitalist society over the last three decades have created new spaces for lesbian and gay rights. Since the early 1970s a long process of restructuring in response to low profit rates has been underway. Governments from Thatcher and Reagan to Harris and Klein have sought to privatize and deregulate, eliminating alternatives to the market for our access to goods and services. The state has been reorganized, with certain areas cut back substantially (health care, social programmes and education) while others have been beefed up (policing, prisons and immigration controls). 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Some moral deregulation has accompanied this reorganization of the state. Governments have deregulated some areas that had been closely controlled, allegedly to protect the population from moral contamination. Gambling was illegal and is now openly promoted by the state, taxing the dreams of working class people by sucking money out of their pockets. There are some parallels between the deregulation of gambling and of homosexuality. Right-wing governments are stepping back from certain forms of moral censorship as part of deregulating markets.

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In this context, it is important to understand the impact that market forces are having on lesbian and gay communities. It is the businesses, the bars, shops and restaurants that increasingly define community spaces. It is the middle-class professionals (lawyers, doctors and businesspeople) who increasing "represent" our communities. The huge corporate presence at Toronto's Pride Day is an important example. It may be a great party, but it can be easy to forget that Pride marks the anniversary of the RIOT at Stonewall.

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Of course, deregulation is only part of the right-wing agenda, which also includes strengthening the repressive power of the state. Gambling is being legalized, but at the same time there are crackdowns on cleaning car windshields or asking for money on the street. We are seeing "boot camps" for young offenders and new policing powers for welfare and immigration agents. This coercive policing certainly applies to certain forms of sexuality. Project Guardian in London, Ont. used the absurdly open-ended "youth porn" laws to haul in a huge number of gay men, none of whom were ultimately charged.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

This is the challenge the queer movement faces at Pride Day 1998. Celebrate our hard-fought victories and realize that they really do make a difference in the lives of many. But remember that lesbian and gay liberation cannot be simply about gaining certain rights that leave the oppressive structures of the state and corporations intact. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

On the queer activism front, things are pretty quiet right now. It is in some ways harder to get people politicized about queer issues when they take certain lesbian and gay rights for grante﻿d. But we've still got a long way to go. A quick visit to a high school should be enough to remind anyone of the aggressive heterosexual masculinity and generally repressive atmosphere that younger queers still face. And Tory cutbacks in Ontario are threatening the pioneering programmes the Toronto school board has developed to address heterosexism in the schools. At the same time, cutbacks and health care restructuring threaten the limited access to treatments and other resources that people living with HIV and AIDS have won. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

This is a time for rebuilding queer activism from the grassroots. To address the complex issues we face today, the queer movement needs to commit itself to solidarity with the movements of workers, women, immigrants, people living in poverty, young people and people of colour. It needs to address the very real inequalities of class, gender, race/ethnicity and age that exist among queers.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Socialists must be active in this grassroots movement. Socialist politics have a lot to say about solidarity in challenging corporate and state power. But to do that better, socialism itself needs to be queered. Many of the "orthodox" versions of Marxism sideline issues of sexuality, race/ethnicity and gender. A new queer socialism requires both rebuilding grassroots activism and renewing socialist politics. 

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﻿<font﻿ ﻿size="1"﻿>﻿Alan Sears is a Windsor-based activist and a member of the New Socialist Group.﻿</font>﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿


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