INTERNATIONAL TROTSKYIST REVIEW #1 -  Resolution on Int'l Work Among Lesbians and Gay Men

RESOLUTION ON INTERNATIONAL WORK
AMONG LESBIANS AND GAY MEN

Adopted by the Founding Conference of the
International Trotskyist Committee
26 July 1984

The Oppression of Lesbians and Gay Men

Lesbians and gay men are exploited under capitalism as workers and oppressed as gay people. Capitalism oppresses lesbians and gay men in order to defend the sexual and sexist division of labor and rigid sex roles of the family. By posing alternative ways to live and relate, lesbians and gay men challenge the structure, functioning, and bourgeois morality of the nuclear family. Since capitalism cannot survive without the nuclear family, it must attack lesbians and gay men as part of its campaign to keep the nuclear family intact.

Capitalist laws, discrimination, and bigotry attack lesbians and gay men. Their history of oppression and struggle for freedom has been largely buried by the capitalist conspiracy of silence against lesbians and gay men. Lesbians and gay men are threatened with losing their jobs and homes or with being denied employment and housing. Their children may be taken from them, or they may be locked in jails or mental hospitals. They may be ostracized by their families or communities. They may be raped, beaten, deported, or thrown into "rehabilitation camps." They may be forced to renounce their homosexuality, or they may be killed. In many countries the repression against lesbians and gay men is so fierce that there is virtually no public information about them.

All lesbians and gay men are oppressed by anti-lesbian/gay bigotry under capitalism. But there are class differences in that oppression. Working-class lesbians and gay men are oppressed not only by anti-lesbian/gay bigotry but also by their role in production as workers. However, working-class lesbians and gay men are also part of the only consistently revolutionary class and thus have power to help overthrow their oppression.

While lesbians and gay men are both oppressed by anti-lesbian/gay bigotry under capitalism, their oppression is different. Lesbians are also oppressed as women and so are relegated to low-paying jobs, are forced to do unpaid household labor, and are socially demeaned. Gay men have the advantage of being men; nevertheless, they are despised. Alienation from family and from all social approval and support makes both gay men and lesbians more vulnerable to low self-esteem. Capitalism attempts to prevent men from becoming gay by condemning gay men as "unmanly," "sissy," the "women" of men. It is a damning indictment of capitalism that being considered womanly in capitalist society is thought to be a terrible accusation.

In imperialist countries, black and other minority lesbians and gay men are also oppressed by the racism promoted under capitalism. As working women, minority lesbians are forced into the lowest-paying, least secure jobs. They face the same racist harassment and terror, high unemployment, low incomes, and inadequate health care and social services, as nonlesbian minority working women. Lesbian workers may also be solely responsible for their children's survival. They face the additional danger of losing their children if they are discovered to be lesbians. Because they face racism, sexism, and anti-lesbian/gay bigotry, minority working-class lesbians are often trapped in the prisons of their nuclear families.

Minority working-class gay men also face racist discrimination. As workers, they get lower-paying jobs and face high unemployment and racist harassment and terror, as well as antigay bigotry.

Lesbians and gay men in neocolonial countries are severely oppressed by the capitalists and landowners in their own countries and by imperialist domination. Severely exploited as workers and peasants, lesbians and gay men struggle to stay alive in the face of starvation, lack of health care and social services, and brutality. In Iran, lesbians and gay men are stoned to death; in Mozambique, they are locked in "rehabilitation centers" and forced to renounce their homosexuality or are exiled.

Lesbians and gay men in Stalinist countries face much the same legal and extralegal discrimination and bigotry as lesbians and gay men in capitalist countries. Ironically enough, the Stalinist bureaucrats denounce lesbians and gay men as "products of bourgeois decadence." Housing is limited to married heterosexual couples, and lesbians and gay men are not allowed to meet openly, either socially or politically. Lesbians and gay men may be denounced, fired from their jobs, jailed, locked in mental hospitals, or deported. Like the capitalists, the Stalinist bureaucrats need the nuclear family to maintain their power and control over the workers. Therefore, like the capitalists, they must attack lesbians and gay men to defend the nuclear family.

Marxists look at the condition of women as a key indicator of the level of development of class society. Similarly, we look at the condition of lesbians and to a great extent of gay men as a key indicator of the condition of women, because the oppression of lesbians and gay men and the oppression of women stem from the same source, the nuclear family. The terrible condition of lesbians and gay men around the world indicates the strength of the family, capitalism's cell-unit of class rule.

The Importance of Work among Lesbians and Gay Men

The goal of a revolutionary international socialist organization is to lead the workers and the oppressed in the struggle to overthrow capitalism worldwide. Lesbians and gay men, who comprise at least 10 percent of the working class internationally, are a significant portion of the class that must be mobilized in this struggle in order for victory to be possible. But more important than their numbers, lesbians and gay men are potentially among the most militant and committed revolutionary fighters, because capitalism's anti-lesbian/gay bigotry means they have less to lose and more to gain by capitalism's overthrow.

As a result of the capitalists' campaign against lesbians and gay men, anti-lesbian/gay bigotry divides the working class and so weakens the workers' struggle against the capitalists. Anti-lesbian/gay bigotry is also an important organizing tool of the fascists: lesbians and gay men are prime targets of fascist terror. Fighting against lesbian/gay oppression is an important part of the struggle against fascism.

Recognizing and fighting the oppression of lesbians and gay men also tests revolutionaries' depth of understanding of women's oppression and their commitment to ending it. Just as revolutionaries must win working-class women to revolutionary politics and build women as leaders now, in order to make women's liberation possible under socialism, we must also win working-class lesbians and gay men to our side and build lesbians and gay men as leaders now, in order to lay the foundation for ending lesbian/gay oppression under socialism.

In "The Programmatic Principles of the International Trotskyist Committee," the ITC has expressed its commitment to intervening in the organized movements of the oppressed, including the lesbian and gay movements, with a transitional program focussed on winning lesbians and gay men to a revolutionary working-class perspective. The ITC must aggressively seek to win lesbians and gay men to that perspective as well as to win nonlesbian and non-gay-male workers to the perspective of full, militant support for the fight against lesbian/gay oppression.

ITC Work among Lesbians and Gay Men

With the intention of rebuilding a democratic-centralist Fourth International, the ITC expects to provide leadership to the working class on an international scale. Recognizing the importance of work among lesbians and gay men to this task, the ITC is committed to work among lesbians and gay men and to the development of lesbians and gay men as leaders in its work. In order to consolidate (or in some cases begin) work among lesbians and gay men as part of the perspectives of the ITC, all sections of the ITC agree to begin the following:

1. Each section will aggressively implement the policies adopted by the ITC in July 1984 in its "Resolution on International Work among Women.'

2. Each section will analyze its current work among lesbians and gay men, including work among lesbians and gay men in the trade unions; organizing working-class lesbians and gay men in their communities; participation in workers' parties; and interventions in the women's movement, the lesbian and gay movements, and the organizations of blacks and other minorities. Each section will analyze its work regarding concrete organizing and recruitment, and the resources currently allocated to this work.

3. Each section will develop concrete written perspectives for work among lesbians and gay men which provide short-term and long-term goals for its work. The resources needed to develop this work will be freed up over a reasonable period of time.

4. Each section will take the necessary steps to consolidate and expand (or begin) its overall work among lesbians and gay men. Each section will determine possible work, including organizing working-class lesbians and gay men in their trade unions, workplaces, and communities around issues of particular concern to lesbians and gay men, such as management harassment, housing, health care, child custody, police harassment, fascist terror, racism and sexism in the lesbian and gay communities, lesbian/gay pride demonstrations, etc. Each section will consider its interventions in unions and in workers' parties and plan how to raise issues and support struggles of concern to lesbians and gay men. Each section will develop perspectives for work among lesbians and gay men in the lesbian and gay movements, in the women's movement, and in organizations of blacks and other minorities, with a focus on recruiting lesbian and gay comrades while winning sections, of these movements to a revolutionary working-class perspective. In all of its work among lesbians and gay men, each ITC section will raise transitional demands and other political issues to win lesbians and gay men to revolutionary politics.

In the trade unions, workers' parties, and other organizations of the workers and the oppressed, each section should raise democratic and transitional demands, taking as a starting point in developing these demands the program developed by the Revolutionary Workers League/US for its intervention in the Lesbian/Gay Coalition against Racism (LGCAR).

5. Each section will take responsibility for planning research on lesbian/gay issues; the history of lesbians and gay men in the trade union movement, the socialist movement, and the lesbian and gay movements; and the history and theory of lesbian and gay oppression. The leadership of each section will encourage and support this research and subsequent writing on these issues.

6. Each section will analyze its newspaper coverage of lesbian and gay oppression and work among lesbians and gay men and will take concrete steps to provide consistent coverage of issues regarding lesbians and gay men in its particular country and internationally.

7. Each section will look critically at its current recruitment of lesbians and gay men, especially working-class and minority lesbians and gay men, and will take concrete steps to recruit more lesbians and gay men over the course of the next time period. The goal of each section will be to raise its number of lesbian and gay members to at least 10 percent of the total membership.

8. Each section will analyze its development of lesbian and gay-male leadership and will take the necessary steps to provide the political education, experience, and support necessary to develop lesbian and gay leaders, theoretically and practically, in work among lesbians and gay men and in all other aspects of their work.

9. Each section will take the necessary steps to provide political education on the oppression of lesbians and gay men for its comrades.

10. Sections in the neocolonial countries will intervene in the fight against imperialism to organize lesbians and gay men and to emphasize the importance of the lesbian/gay question, as well as the woman question, to national liberation and workers' revolution.

11. Each section will provide copies of its perspectives for work among lesbians and gay men, as outlined in this resolution, for all other ITC sections within one year after this resolution has been adopted.

12. Each section will exchange documents organizing materials, etc., on its work among lesbians and gay men with the other ITC sections.

13. The ITC will communicate with the International Gay Association (IGA), the International Lesbian Information Network (ILIN), and other international lesbian and gay organizations to begin to establish links with lesbians and gay men around the world.

The ITC will further develop guidelines for work among lesbians and gay men in Stalinist countries when sections from those countries become members of the ITC.  

A goal of the ITC, when possible, will be to form an international lesbian/gay commission develop international perspectives on work among lesbians and gay men and to coordinate that work internationally.

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