Sexuality

Myth of the Black-Gay Divide

Gary — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:45:51 -0500

by Sherry Wolf

In the wake of Barack Obama's historic victory, a false and reactionary narrative has emerged that blames Black voters for the gay marriage ban that passed by a 52 to 48 percent margin in California.

While Florida and Arizona also passed same-sex marriage bans, the vote for Prop 8 in the politically progressive state of California is widely attributed to the enormous surge of Black voters, 70 percent of whom approved the ban reversing the state's May 2008 Supreme Court decision allowing lesbians and gays to marry. The exit polls showed that 53 percent of Latinos voted for the ban, as well as around 49 percent of white voters.

The state's Black population, however, is 6.2 percent, and it accounted for 10 percent of the overall vote. In other words, blaming African Americans for the referendum's passage ignores 90 percent of the vote.

It also ignores recent history. To judge from social research, had there been an unapologetically pro-civil rights campaign, there was the prospect of a different outcome.

The most comprehensive study of Black attitudes toward homosexuality, which combines 31 national surveys from 1973 to 2000, came to a fascinating conclusion. Georgia State University researchers found that "Blacks appear to be more likely than whites both to see homosexuality as wrong and to favor gay-rights laws."

Arab Sexualities: Peter Drucker Reviews Desiring Arabs

Gary — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:57:57 -0500

by Joseph A. Massad
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007
444 pages, $35 hardcover.
from: www.solidarity-us.org/node/1962.

THE ISSUE OF same-sex sexualities in the Arab world is a political and intellectual minefield, and more so since 9/11 than before. In a bizarre twist, neoconservatives and other rightists who were hostile for decades to the lesbian/gay movement(1) have repackaged themselves as defenders of oppressed Arab women and gays. Responses from the left have been divided.

When international human rights or LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) groups have issued alerts lately about persecution of Middle Eastern LGBT people (most often in Iran), some anti-imperialist gays have denounced the critics for contributing to the Republicans' (and some prominent Democrats') war drive. Others, closer to the politics of Against the Current, have insisted on the importance both of opposition to U.S. intervention and of solidarity with LGBTs.

The arguments have rarely shown much knowledge of the sexual cultures of the Arab world, however, or included much analysis of how imperialism and sexuality interact. Overcoming this lack of understanding is a crucial and urgent task.

Homosexual men have significantly lower personal incomes than heterosexual individuals

scottn — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:23:21 -0400

Homosexual men have significantly lower personal incomes than heterosexual individuals
from e! Science News, October 29, 2008.

A new study in the Canadian Journal of Economics provides the first evidence on sexual orientation and economic outcomes in Canada. The study found that gay men have 12 percent lower personal incomes and lesbians have 15 percent higher personal incomes than heterosexual men and women. Christopher S. Carpenter of The Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California Irvine used data from the Canadian Community Health Survey which includes standard demographic questions as well as self-reports on sexual orientation.

Like previous patterns found in the U.S. and the U.K., results show that gay men have significantly lower personal incomes than similarly situated straight individuals, while lesbians have significantly higher personal incomes than straight women.

Socialism and Homosex

Gary — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:09:26 -0400

By Doug Ireland, Gay City News, July 28, 2008

Recovering our hidden gay history has been a critically important byproduct of the modern gay movement, and in its current Summer 2008 issue, the 46-year-old independent socialist review New Politics has published a significant discovery that restores to us a lost moment of our political history - specifically, of the history of gays and the left.

The discovery was made quite accidentally by the historian Christopher Phelps, a professor of history at Ohio State University at Mansfield whose books include the critically well-regarded biography "Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and Pragmatist." While Phelps was researching a forthcoming book on anti-Stalinist black radicals, he came across an article by one "H.L. Small" on homosexual emancipation entitled "Socialism and Sex," which appeared in 1952 in Young Socialist, the mimeographed bulletin of the youth section of the Socialist Party, then led by Norman Thomas.

And on further investigation, and after interviewing survivors of that period, Phelps unearthed the fact that there was an organized effort within the Socialist Party at that time to have it take a firm and bold position in favor of the decriminalization of homosexuality and the end of discrimination against gays and lesbians - an unheard of political initiative at the time for any political party.

Allan Bérubé, 1946-2007: A Queer Working-Class Community-Based Historian.

Gary — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:25:14 -0400

By Gary Kinsman

AN INSPIRING AND broad-ranging queer historian, Allan Bérubé died at the age of 61 on December 11, 2007. He left us with major contributions of exciting historical work, but also important unfinished work that needs to be continued.

Bérubé’s allegiance was not to the academy but to the movement and community. Bérubé’s histories, as he put it, were about the lives of ordinary lesbians and gay men. He was not formally trained as a historian. Instead his remarkable skills grew out of his decade long involvement in the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project and the broader grassroots queer history movement based on developing ways to return our history to our communities.

Some of his earliest work with the History Project was on women who cross-dressed and passed as men. Bérubé’s historical work, while centering on gay and queer experiences, always examined the ways in which sexuality, class, race and gender relations are made in and through each other. Sexuality, for him, was thought and practiced in relation to class, race and gender.

Marching To A Different Drummer

Anarchist Communism and Queer Liberation

Gary — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:50:53 -0400

As anarchist communists, it is only logical and consistent with our principles in the struggle for a free humanity that we support the personal, cultural, and institutional fight against patriarchy, hetero-sexism, the gender bi-nary system and all other struggles for queer liberation both in themselves and in their intersectionalities with capitalism, the state, white supremacy, and all other forms of human oppression.

by Thomas Giovanni, NEFAC - Boston Local Union

Anarchist communism is- and has always been- against all oppression and exploitation of people over people including any system where a person or group of people has privilege or power over any other person or group politically, economically, socially or otherwise.

It is for a cooperative and free social order aimed at the equal freedom of all humanity achieved through: directly-democratic decision-making, a social/cultural value system actively opposing domination, privilege, oppression and exploitation and a classless economy where all contribute according to their ability and receive according to their needs.

Some Queer Revolutionary History: Proletarians of all Nations: Caress Yourselves!

Gary — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:25:28 -0400

Founded in 1970, the French Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action brings together more than 4,000 militants in France who have decided to show themselves. Everywhere and by all means. "Class struggle goes through the body."

"Having no reason for being other than desire, homosexuality is the living negation of false values, sacrosanct institutions and all roles. It is the absolute negation of the world such as it is."

"Lesbians and faggots, let's raze the walls. Let us leave the dumps and the ghettoes!"

QUEER TEENS SURVEYED FEEL UNSAFE IN SCHOOL

Gary — Sun, 18 May 2008 21:43:48 -0400

May 9, 2008

St. Johns: Results just released from the first phase of Egale Canada’s National Survey on homophobia and transphobia in Canadian Schools reveal that over two-thirds of those students who identified as lesbian, gay, bi, trans and Two-Spirit, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) feel unsafe at school. Almost half have had rumours spread about them at school and close to a third have had rumours spread about them on the internet or through text messages.

"Based on those who self-identified as LGBTQ and who were enrolled in school in the last year, 41 per cent had been sexually harassed compared to 19 per cent of those who identified as straight," said Dr. Catherine Taylor of the University of Winnipeg and the survey’s principal investigator. "This figure is shocking. Homophobia and transphobia is linked to poor performance in school, drop-out rates and teen suicides."

The survey was launched in December of last year and so far has heard from over 1,200 participants from cities, small towns, rural areas, reserves, armed forces bases in every province and territory of the country. It is the first survey of its kind in Canada.

Play It Again, Judy: A Brief History of Queer Pop Music

Gary — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:06:30 -0400

By Michael Bronski, Z Net

Although I've only been teaching gay and lesbian studies for eight years, my involvement in writing about it (and participating in it) stretch back almost four decades. I have learned innumerable things during that time—and engaging with younger queer people has changed my mind about a number of issues. One of the most important changes has come from my realization that teaching "history" is a lot harder than teaching about social issues. Students have no trouble comprehending and grappling with complicated legal issues and political theory. They have no problem figuring out a causal historical timeline, but they often have no real sense of what this recent history felt like, or the extraordinarily high level of emotional content that fueled it or the emotions that emerged from it.

CHINA'S ANTI-GAY CRACKDOWN

Gary — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:30:44 -0400

Gay City News, April 10, 2008
Police raids mark pre-Olympic repression as leading AIDS activist is jailed

by DOUG IRELAND
The wave of repression and intimidation of human rights activists and
dissidents in China in advance of the Beijing Olympics has also
targeted homosexuals, according to China's best-known gay and AIDS
activist.

In an email, Dr. Wan Yanhai reported that the month of March saw
numerous police raids on gay gathering spots in Beijing and Shanghai,
and he said that the evidence of a new pre-Olympic crackdown on gays
is so widespread it is clear it is being orchestrated "at the
national level."

Wan is not just anybody. A former official of China's Ministry of
Public Health, he was fired in 1994 for his participation in AIDS
information and prevention campaigns and for his support of full
equal rights for homosexuals.

After being purged from the ministry, Wan founded the AIDS-fighting
Aizhixing Action Project (the Chinese characters for "Aizhixing"
represent love, knowledge, and action, and are a play on the Chinese
word for AIDS). The association also works for freedom of expression
on the Internet and is active on behalf of LGBT rights.

Hu Jia, the former executive director of Aizhixing and a long-time
close collaborator of Wan who is also a noted human rights activist,