US National Library of Medicine Collection. ACT Up Post Card 1988
The gay community can’t even agree when gay activism started – was it stonewall in 1969? The Mattachine Society in 1946? Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, 1933? How about 1923?
As you’d expect, with such a diverse and global community, we can’t agree on politics, or history, either.
Broadly speaking gay politics falls into three camps.
The assimilationists start from the premise that, apart from our sexuality, we are the same as straights and should integrate into society; we should come out, and through education, culture and legislation defuse the fear and hatred of our community. We should conform and integrate and become full members of society. An example of this camp is Stonewall, which campaigns within society to persuade people to lead by example and increase our perceived value in the wider community. Because they regard themselves as citizens who happen to be gay, assimilationists tend to belong to conventional political groups and parties.
The radicals are the opposite; our sexuality makes us completely different from straight people and instead of assimilating and integrating we should be allowing our culture and identity to develop free of the inhibitions of the straight world; through that we will transform straight society from what it is now to something else which will be better; through that we will reach our full potential as individuals. An example of this camp is the Radical Faeries started by the late Harry Hay, or the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
Queers work within the system to effect change, but at the same time value and promote queerness and queer culture, and sit between the two extremes. They have adopted the methods and processes of the governing system but confront and challenge it with provocative campaigns which raise awareness. An example is Outrage which outed people, campaigned against hate music, and developed ‘queer politics’.
Whatever your individual politics, change is achieved when someone takes a lead and others follow. Once the change is set in motion it is then a matter of persuading others to come to terms with it.
The Gay Pride Debate
Photo: Ritchiesoft
Gay Pride is an event held by a local gay community once a year to celebrate the diversity of the gay lifestyle, raise awareness of issues and to raise funds for community activities and gay organisations. Gay Pride has become big business.
Originally, the Pride March was a statement of defiance against the authorities, a rally calling for gay rights, a way of combating the low self-esteem and position held in society by gay people, and providing the evidence to society that there were large numbers of us and we deserved to be heard.
But now that laws are changing and gay people in the West are being given access to their human rights on a basis which avoids discrimination, there are increasing numbers of gay people who think that the Gay Pride can be consigned to the dust bin of history and that it is no longer relevant.
It is useful to consider some of our history. I limit this discussion to the social history of gay men in the United Kingdom.
Before 1888 gay men were just as full a part of society as everyone else.
While gay men (not lesbians) were outlaws of society in the UK – from the Labouchere Amendment of 1888 to the 1967 Act – for our own safety, shunned by society, excluded or hidden from our families and friends, we gathered together in secret places (which we often found quite by accident), and developed our own culture. This culture and the attidudes and aspirations of gay men of the time were well documented in the book “Between The Acts”.
During the 1920s the repression of gay men was so well established and stories persist that those gay men who could afford it, fled the country and set up ex-pat gay communities in places like the Baltic States and North Africa, particularly Riga and Tangiers.
During the second world war there were more important things to do than persecute gay men and lesbians and they were largely ignored. My parents got to know the gay community of their town by going to public dances while they were courting; the gay men all congregated in one corner of the room.
The period after the second world war included some years where the repression of gay men actually increased as there were witch hunts, arrests, blackmailings and exposures of gay men. It was during that time that many were subjected to electric shock treatments or were driven by persecution to take their own lives.
The 1967 Act only gave gay men a slight amount of freedom but it did become possible to assemble more openly and to have publications like magazines and more readily accessible meeting places such as openly gay pubs.
Photo: London School of Economics
Photo: CHE
Organisations such as CHE and GLF were formed and the gay pride march began life not as primarily a celebration of our community but as a protest march in which we stood up for ourselves and demanded our civil rights.
Since those days we have gained access to our civil rights but the damage done by the repression of so many years – suicides, depression, social exclusion, poverty and alienation – continues to this day and continues to affect newer generations of gay people who, despite the change in the laws, still have a low self-value and negative image of themselves.
Gay pride – and those gay books, magazines and organisations which were completely absent when I was growing up and coming to terms with my own sexuality – are today a valuable resource for people young and old who are today going through those same agonising identity crises that I and so many others went through. There were no gay centres or switchboards when I was a teenager and knew not a single other gay person who I could talk to about my feelings.
Gay Activist has some empathy with those of us who find the whole gay pride march out of date and too camp to bear, and agrees with those commentators and activists who can see a day when Gay Pride and a separate gay cultural identity are no longer relevant because we are no longer discriminated against, ostracised, or in danger of being blackmailed or beaten up. That day will come as sure as night follows day, eventually.
But that day is not here yet, and there are millions of gay people all over the world who need those books, magazines, bars, clubs, organisations, drag shows and the gay pride march. If those events draw unfavourable comments from other sections of the community it is our job as activists to explain to the wider community what those events mean to us, how important they are in our culture, history and community development, and why they are so necessary.
Page Updated 5 March 2011
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