After years of progrs on gay rights, how did the US bee so anti-LGBTQ+? | US news | The Guardian

Contents:

• WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE RIGHT-WG AND GAY ISRAEL
• THE PHILOSOPHIL FASCISTS OF THE GAY ALT-RIGHT
• AFTER YEARS OF PROGRS ON GAY RIGHTS, HOW DID THE US BEE SO ANTI-LGBTQ+?
• MILO YIANNOPOULOS SAYS HE IS ‘EX-GAY,’ WANTS TO REHABILATE ‘NVERSN THERAPY’
• GAY-WGS
• FOX NEWS HOSTS CONFED ABOUT WHETHER TO CALL GAY MAN MR. OR MS.

WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE RIGHT-WG AND GAY ISRAEL

"When we showed gay people, " he says, "when we elevated the voic of gay people as part of the nversatn — and I say this as someone who is gay — we wanted to show the gay people as part of a fay, the gay people as part of a workplace, the gay people this se as part of a classroom.

He said he was "never wholly at home the gay liftyle" and "only leaned heavily to public bee drove liberals crazy to see a handsome, charismatic, telligent gay man rtoly celebratg nservative prcipl. Conference anizer Nick Fuent, troducg Greene as a speaker, publicly thanked Yiannopoulos for makg that, for her part, has promoted many bizarre nspiracy theori and ma numero homophobic and transphobic statements.

But even the terms for homosexualy—that is, same-sex sire and those who intify wh —and s polil them reflect the nstantly shiftg historil meangs of same-sex sire: the third sex, homophile, gay, gay and lbian, queer, and most recently, glbtq. One is the posns taken by anized socialist and left-wg groups (for example, the Socialist Workers Party or Democratic Socialists of Ameri), another are those left polil perspectiv that emerged wh homosexual muni (Gay Left magaze, Gay Communy News). But there are also other left perspectiv that have impged on homosexual issu, such as that of the libertarian and anarchist left (Emma Goldman, Alexanr Berkman) or the Frdian left (Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marce).

THE PHILOSOPHIL FASCISTS OF THE GAY ALT-RIGHT

THE FIGHT FOR ACCEPTANCE of homosexualy and polil regnn of homosexuals' right to sexual eedom has a long leage on the left and n be traced back to polil movements and activists on the left Germany, Great Bra and the Uned Stat.

" Between the time of Wil's trial (1895) and World War I, Edward Carpenter, a leadg thor on sexualy and socialism, wrote about homosexualy, genr, and inty The Intermediate Sex and fend femism and homosexualy his bt-sellg book, Love's Comg of Age. The Scientific-Humanarian Commtee (Wissenschaftlich-Humantär Komee), the first homosexual rights movement, found Germany by Magn Hirschfeld 1897, was closely allied wh the Social Democratic Party, the leadg German socialist party. Durg World War II, the well-known poet Robert Dunn published the first polil analysis of the stat of homosexuals Amerin society Dwight MacDonald's non-sectarian leftist/anarchist journal Polics (Augt 1944).

AFTER YEARS OF PROGRS ON GAY RIGHTS, HOW DID THE US BEE SO ANTI-LGBTQ+?

The homophile movement that emerged the 1950s was found by former members of the Communist Party who drew upon their anizg skills to tablish the first gay rights anizatn, the Mattache Society. One was the explosn of youth culture (and the stunt polil movements) that stimulated the thirst of young men and women for sexual experience before marriage; another was the emergence of femism and the women's movement at the end of the sixti; and lastly was the gay liberatn movement's dramatic Stonewall rebelln 1969.

In time, the sexual revolutn also provoked a profound and powerful unter-revolutn—the relig fundamentalist right—that ntu to wage a battle agast the forc and over the issu (homosexualy, abortn, sex tn, and non-maral sexualy) that origally igned the revolutn. Even those who ntributed to directly—hippi, rock micians, anti-war activists, leftist revolutnari, femists, and lbian and gay activists—sometim felt that was irrelevant, perhaps dangero, misguid, or even misogynist. In his History of Sexualy: An Introductn, Fouult showed that certa late-eighteenth-century and neteenth-century disurs (such as medice and psychiatry) articulated a seri of pathologil sexual stereotyp that exerted a tremendo fluence up through the twentieth century: the masturbatg child, the hysteril woman, the Malthian uple (who practiced birth ntrol), and the homosexual.

MILO YIANNOPOULOS SAYS HE IS ‘EX-GAY,’ WANTS TO REHABILATE ‘NVERSN THERAPY’

MODERN HOMOSEXUAL POLITICS dat self om the Stonewall rts of 1969, when a police raid on a Greenwich Village bar lled the Stonewall Inn provoked a seri of rts that mobilized drag queens, street htlers, lbians and gay men, many of whom had been policized by the movement agast the war Vietnam. Many early participants the movements for lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr people's rights had been volved movements of the 1960s—the civil rights movements, the anti-war movement, the stunt movement, and the femist movement.

GAY-WGS

The first polil anizatn formed wake of the Stonewall rts was the Gay Liberatn Front (GLF), named honor of the Natnal Liberatn Front, the Vietname ristance movement, and as a gture toward the uny of the stggl of blacks, the poor, the lonized the Third World, and women. One early flyer, distributed the Bay Area early 1970, announced that "the Gay Liberatn Front is a natn-wi aln of revolutnary homosexual anizatns creatg a radil Counter Culture wh the homosexual liftyl. In the perd immediately after the Stonewall rts, the gay and lbian movement did not at first foc on the qutn of inty, or even strictly on civil rights—though black civil rights was, most certaly, on the polil horizon—but on sexual liberatn.

The sexual revolutn had been unrway sce the early '60s and that, along wh the stunt anti-war movement, which had mobilized lns of Amerins agast the war Vietnam, fluenced how gay activists amed their polil stggl. More than any other polil groupg around the project of creatg a synthis of Gay Liberatn and Marxism, the Gay Left group produced an amb and theoretilly herent argument about the ways which power shaped the notns of homosexualy and produced staed sexual opprsn. Drawg on the work of Marxist theorist Anton Gramsci, Sigmund Frd, and Michel Fouult (whose theori they anticipated to some gree), they wrote about the velopment of sexual opprsn unr palism, the forms of polil ristance to , the tegratn of sexual polics to polil anizatns on the left, the nature of the new gay and lbian culture, the role of nsumerism, and the emergence of lbian and gay polil inti.

FOX NEWS HOSTS CONFED ABOUT WHETHER TO CALL GAY MAN MR. OR MS.

Many members of the Gay Left llective beme fluential wrers and thkers the s sce: Jefey Weeks on the history of sexualy; Frank Mort on the history of health, medice, and the regulatn of sexualy; Richard Dyer on film and gay culture; Simon Watney on the impact of media and on the polics of HIV/AIDS; and Bob Cant on the tegratn of sexual polics to the left. Weeks, Kenh Plummer, and other gay left historians intified the specific social and enomic ndns that permted the growth of a homosexual subculture and s psychologil-polil outgrowth—the morn lbian and gay male inty. In the late 1970s, centers of gay left thkg emerged the North Ameri—among the wrers and edors of The Body Polics Toronto (Jam Steakley, John D'E, Tom Wgh); around the Gay Communy News  Boston (Michael Bronski, Urvashi Vaid, Sue Hy, Amy Hoffman, Ellen Herman); the San Francis Lbian and Gay History Project (Amber Hollibgh, Gayle Rub, Allan Bebe, Jefey Esffier); and a seri of study groups on sexualy New York Cy (John D'E, Jonathan Ned Katz, Lisa Duggan, Nan Hunter).

Sce the foundg of the GLF, the Gay Left as a polil tenncy has mataed that polil eedom of homosexual and transgenred people mt take place wh the ntext of promotg the rights of women, racial and ethnic mori, workg-class and opprsed people around the world. Earlier this week the New Yorker reported that, durg a Whe Hoe discsn on gay rights, Donald Tmp glibly said that Mike Pence, who has been acced of supportg nversn therapy for LGBT people, “wants to hang them all”.